Can't start using git repo in plasticscm

Question

After installing new plasticscm from the download page on Windows 10, choosing default or creating new repo, going to the Branch Explorer, I can't use "Sync with Git..." feature, it tells me "The user appears as an inactive user because his/her license has been deactivated. Please, activate it and then try again".

First I don't get, why the license is deactivated by default, but I followed instructions from https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/technical-articles/user-license-is-deactivated.html and tried to create a user, but when I call "cm au ", then I get error "You don't have permissions to activate user . You need to be repository server administrator in order to be allowed to complete this operation." and when I call "cm sto -user= repserver:localhost:8087", I get error "You don't have permissions to activate user . You need to be repository server administrator in order to be allowed to complete this operation." again.

How to fix my situation?

Maybe the address "repserver:localhost:8087" should be differently, because I don't know what to put instead of repserver, but using the name of the repo instead, I get error "Error: Uvedený formát cesty není podporován." meaning that the format of the path is not supported.

EDIT: I realized something strange after reading again output of "cm li":

      Plastic SCM license information:



      * User-license information:

salichl                   INACTIVE (Not licensed)

---------------------------------------
Licensed to: Plastic SCM trial license
Expiration date: 23.11.2016 19:12:23
Edition: team
Total licensed users: 1
Total activated users: 0
Total available users: 1
---------------------------------------

and maybe I know how it happened, because I had some old plasticd.lic on plasticscm web and after logging in, it changed "EXPIRATION" to the date, which is in the past and after downloading it, it changed status to "Expired", but before I realized it, I used it and after using it, I couldn't probably change the "plasticd.lic" back to the original one downloaded with the plasticscm installation even though I rewritten it back.

So in the end, I probably shouldn't log in to the plasticscm web, because it changed the old (and in that time valid) licence to invalid one without informing me (the rules for the licences were probably changed in the meantime, because it was 3 years old) and now I can't even use the 5 day trial and must wait, if someone hopefully enables "Personal Edition" (I only wanted to try using Branch Explorer on git repositories and check if it works, because the git shows branches terribly for me).

EDIT2: I guess the strange behavior for me is As Designed...

Answer 1

Let me explain you how to manage the Plastic SCM licenses (there is also a blog post with detailed information: http://blog.plasticscm.com/2016/01/how-to-manage-plastic-scm-licenses.html).

It's important to note that all the commands to manage licenses are only available if you are the server administrator user, so if you haven't configured yet your admin user, please drive to the Repositories & Workspaces view, right-click Repository server permissions and mark your user as the owner.

Once you are the owner, you will always have the permissions to manage and reassign the Plastic SCM server licenses.

In order to reassign the license spot, I need to deactivate the user that is no longer active, running the cm deactivateuser command:

cm deactivateuser olduser

Finally, I'm going to assign the released license to our new developer running the cm activateuser command:

cm activateuser newuser

After that, if I check the license information again, I can confirm that everything worked as expected running:

cm licenseinfo

The Plastic SCM license system allows to have read-only users. When you create a new user in Plastic, it's neither active nor inactive by default. He is on a third state where he is able to run read-only operations such as update, diff... He will only be turned into an active user as soon as he checkins or pushes branches to the server.

The server license is not changed just logging in your www.plasticscm.com account. It will only change if you replace de "plastic.lic" file or if you have configured a license token (https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/administration/plastic-scm-version-control-administrator-guide.shtml#Chapter15:Howtoconfigurethelicenseautorenewal). After replacing a license, you will need to restart the server.

Anyway, if you still face issues or you need a new trial, please contact us: "support at codicesoftware dot com" and we will be happy to assist you and generate a new license trial if necessary.