FAQs

Action required for academic customers renewing for 2023

For most academic customers your licence now expires on the 31st of December. Usually you keep the same licence key from year to year, however academic customers are being issued with new licence keys for 2023 for security reasons.

• Academic customers using node-locked licensing will need to make sure that all computers running the CSD Portfolio have been reactivated with the new key in order to maintain access to CSD Portfolio software.
• The easiest way to reactivate is from the command line:
  ccdc_activator -a -k NEW-ACTIVATION-KEY
• Academic customers using a local licence server will also have been issued with a new licence server key and will need to reactivate their local licence server with this key.
• If you have set up the software to use a local licence server, the activation steps can be found here.
• More details on how to reactivate the software using the ccdc_activator tool can be found in the CSD Portfolio Release and Installation Notes.

To check whether CCDC have extended the expiration date of your licence, log into the licence portal. If you are an academic customer and have not received your new key, or you are an industrial customer and your expiration date has not been extended, please check with your site contact to determine the status of your renewal.

To check whether your computer has picked up on the new expiration date, start Mercury and click Help > About Mercury. In the new window that appears, scroll down until you see your expiration date.

For standard licence key extensions using the same activation key

If you are using a node-locked activation key on a machine that is connected to the internet, there is very little required of you. If you believe that the expiration date should have been extended, close and restart Mercury. Your machine will sync with our license server and update your licence details if you have renewed your licence.

If you are unable to start Mercury because a message appears that your licence has expired, you will have to reactivate it using the ccdc_activator tool. If activation has been set up for all users, you can either manually reactivate for each user or delete their locally stored activation info to trigger a re-run of the automated silent activation. The location of the locally stored activation info depends on the operating system:

• Windows: In the Registry in HKCU\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\csetz
• Linux: ~/.local/share/data/bconf/data.conf
• MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/iConf/data.conf

If you have renewed your licence but your machine is not connected to the internet, then you will need to either connect to the internet and follow the steps above or perform an offline activation using the software activation tool to generate a request.

Information on accessing the latest release can be found here.

Note that it is important to check with your site contact on the renewal status first. If you have followed the steps above and still require assistance, do contact us at admin@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.