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Local Hostname is not in Network Database

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UpdatedSeptember 30, 2025

Overview

Certain operating systems, most common with MacOS, append “.local” to the DNS hostname of the operating system. Under these conditions RLM may not recognize your device’s hostname when starting the license server and gives the error “local hostname is not in network database”.

 

Causes

If your license file has the hostname of the system with “.local”, RLM may not be able to find itself with a DNS lookup. For example, if your hostname is “your-hostname.local” in the license file instead of “your-hostname”, this may cause the issue.

 
This type of hostname utilizes Multicast DNS (mDNS/Bonjour), which is different than what RLM uses to resolve hostnames (unicast DNS)

 

Troubleshooting (MacOS and Linux)

The most common issue is the “.local” version of your hostname not being included in the /etc/hosts file. You can double check that this is the cause by running ping your-hostname.local in the terminal. If the hostname is not configured properly, this ping will fail.
There are a couple of ways to fix this issue:
 
1. Change the hostname in your license file so that “.local” is not included.
or
2. Add a line to the /etc/hosts file with these contents. 127.0.0.1 your-hostname.local

RLM and RLM
Activation Pro

What’s the difference?

Reprise License Manager (RLM)

Software License Manager

RLM provides runtime checking that verifies that your application is licensed to run and that the current usage of your application is within the limits you have ser every time your application runs.

As a Software publisher, you integrate RLM into your product, and RLM keeps track at runtime of who is using the licenses of your software.

RLM can do this entirely within the client library (linked into your application), or, more commonly, your application makes a request of the RLM Lincese Server to check out a license.

The lincese server runs either on your customers network, or in the cloud if you are using our RLMCloud™ service.

RLM provides runtime checking that verifies that your application is licensed to run and that the current usage of your application is within the limits you have ser every time your application runs.

RLM Activation Pro

Software Activation Manager

Activation Pro is
used once when your customer purchases your software in order to retrieve the license which is specific to that customer.

Software Activation’s purpose in life is to get the licenses for your product to your customers with a minimum of fuss.

Activation Pro also has a server component wich we call the activation server.

Your application contacts the activation server and supplies a short text activation key, and in exchange, the activation server returns the license which enables your product.

Generally, this is done once, right after your customer purchases your software, not every time your software is invoked.