SUMMARY
Foundry licenses are generated using a System ID. The System ID is your MAC address from your ethernet, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth adapter on your machine. If your System ID is not found, is altered or changes due to a hardware change or randomization, then your licenses will stop functioning.
If you find that your Foundry products licenses have suddenly unexpectedly stopped working, this may indicate that you have a MAC randomization setting enabled on your machine which has changed your MAC address and caused your licenses to be made invalid.
The MAC randomization setting can vary with the particular system's implementation. In most cases, it will cause the MAC address of your Wi-Fi adapter to change each time it connects to a network or the machine is restarted.
Most modern operating systems have MAC randomization as a security option.
As our licensing system relies on a stable MAC address to act as the System ID, we suggest disabling MAC randomization on your machine and this article will show you how, to ensure your licenses function as expected.
MORE INFORMATION
Most modern versions of common operating systems, including Windows 10/11 and Linux, have security settings available to toggle MAC randomization on or off.
It is recommended that these settings are left disabled for systems running Foundry licenses, due to the aforementioned issues they can cause.
NOTE: MAC randomization is only present starting with macOS Sequoia.
NOTE: Only Nuke 15.2v1+ and 16.0v1+, Flix 7.0.0+ and the ARM version of Modo 17.1v1 are supported on macOS Sequoia. More information on the supported macOS versions across our products can be found here: Q100592: Important Announcement - Compatibility of Foundry products with the latest Apple macOS updates and Apple Silicon processors
Windows
Windows has a built in option to disable MAC randomization which is accessed through the Settings app:
- Select the Start button, then select Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi
- Turn off “Use random hardware addresses”
You may also have "Use random hardware addresses" enabled on a specific network which can be disabled via the following steps:
- Select the Start button, then select Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Manage known networks
- Choose your network, then select Properties and choose the setting Off under “Use random hardware addresses” for this network
Once applied you may need to reboot your machine for the changes to take effect.
Rocky 9 Linux
Disabling random MAC addresses on Rocky 9 can be done using the nmcli commands in the terminal like so:
- Launch a Terminal window and run the command
nmcli con show
This will display a list of your installed network devices including details such as the Name, Type and Device.
- With the network devices now identified, the MAC randomization setting can be updated on your 'wifi' device by running the following command, updating ”NetworkName” to match the NAME shown using the command nmcli con show:
nmcli con modify "NetworkName" wifi.cloned-mac-address permanent
If applying this setting to an ethernet device you will need to use the following command:nmcli con modify "NetworkName" ethernet.cloned-mac-address permanent
- For this change to apply, the device needs to be disconnected and reconnected. This can be done by rebooting the machine or running the following commands, replacing DeviceName with the matching DEVICE shown using the command nmcli con show:
Disconnect:nmcli device disconnect DeviceName
Reconnect:nmcli device connect DeviceName
macOS Sequoia
On macOS Sequoia, the default setting for Wi-Fi connections will have MAC randomization enabled. This can be disabled with the following steps:
- Select the Apple menu > System Settings, then click Wi-Fi in the sidebar.
- Click the Details button or More Info button next to the network name.
- From the menu next to Private Wi-Fi Address, choose Off.
NOTE: This will need to be applied to any Wi-Fi networks that you connect to and plan to use with Foundry products. More information is available here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102509
NOTE: A fix for this MAC randomization issue on macOS Sequoia with the release of Nuke 15.1v5 which should allow Nuke to detect your installed licenses on macOS Sequoia. Please refer to the following article for the operating systems supported by each Nuke version: Q100651: Supported operating system compatibility list for Nuke
FURTHER HELP
If you are still unable to restore your licenses functionality after following the steps above, please create a support ticket letting us know the exact issue you are encountering and any troubleshooting steps that you may have tried.
For more information on how to open a support request, please refer to this article: Q100064: How to raise a support ticket
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