Metered license issue - sometimes showing watermark and evaluation only text (PDF convert)

Hello, we ran into a serious issue today. We have a metered license and are self-hosting the Aspose.Words through docker compose. The license and the keys have been the same since 2021.
We also upgraded the docker container recently - maybe that is the issue.
Anyway - we are having “Evaluation Only. Created with Aspose.Words…” text on our PDFs that are converted from DOCX files.
This is a very bad thing for our business and need to resolve this ASAP.
Should we revert the container or is it possible to use some kind of other license type? Can it be that the error happens as Aspose’s API to check for license is unstable and therefore giving this result?

Thank you for the help

@rainitavokaado There were no problems with Containerize.Purchase API recently. The last incident was Friday 12th January 2024:

You can track status here https://status.containerize.com/

The problem also might be caused by too many request form your side. The license should be applied only once per application domain. For example, you can apply the license on application start or in a static constructor of the main class.
Also, you are using metered license, which makes call to our server to verify license. Too many request to the license verification service might cause rejection of the further requests.
image.png (22.9 KB)

Looking at the logs, there were not many requests. We only have one docker container running and serving the requests. At the moment i downgraded the Aspose.Words container and we are using the oldone, as we cannot risk having a watermark for our customers. The new container also does not log anything for us to debug. Can we somehow debug this or find out what is causing this?
We see this as a huge issue. The feature we are using is to convert docx to PDF and nothing else.
So also the question is, what can we do to mitigate it? Can we change the licensing, buy in bulk or do something else?

@rainitavokaado I asked my colleagues who work on metered licensing mechanism to take a look whether there were some problems.

Normally it is enough to apply the metered license once on application start. However, if the metered licensing mechanism fails to communicate with the Aspose servers for 24 hours, Aspose.Words will exit licensed mode and switch to evaluation mode. To avoid such case, you should regularly check the license status – if Aspose.Words turns into evaluation mode, please apply the metered license again. You can check whether the license is set using the following code:

private static bool IsLicensed()
{
    const string testString = "test";
    Document doc = new Document();
    DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder(doc);
    builder.Write(testString);

    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
    {
        doc.Save(ms, SaveFormat.Docx);
        ms.Position = 0;
        doc = new Document(ms);
    }

    string test = doc.ToString(SaveFormat.Text).Trim();

    return test == testString;
}

Hello,

we do not implement any code on our side. We just use the ready-made docker container and the API it publishes. We just send in the HTTP request with the docx data and get PDF back. We have no necessity to modify the code in there. Is it possible to log this information out?
Example

AsposeWordsCloud:
  image: aspose/words-cloud
  ports: [ "8082:80" ]
  volumes: [
      "/opt/fonts:/fonts",
      "/data/aspose:/data",
  ]
  environment:
    "User": "xxx"
    "Password": "xxx"
    "LicensePublicKey": "xxx"
    "LicensePrivateKey": "xxx"

@rainitavokaado Do you use Aspose.Words for Cloud version? Or the ready-made docker container is created using on premises version of Aspose.Words?

Hello, yes, we have the ready-made docker container hosted on-premise with a metered license. The issue started occurring after upgrading the docker image yesterday. https://hub.docker.com/r/aspose/words-cloud

@rainitavokaado Your question is related to Aspose.Words for Cloud. I will move your request to the appropriate forum.

@rainitavokaado

We are sorry for the inconvenience. We have checked the logs, and there is no known issue in Aspose.Words Cloud Docker. It may be that your server failed to send a usage report to our server due to a broken or slow connection that caused the issue.

Furthermore, please note that the metered license will be set to the evaluation state if the API can’t send the consumption data to Aspose Cloud Server for 24 hours. The condition that triggers the evaluation mode is: more than 10 consecutive reporting fails, and the time span between the first fail time and the last fail time exceeds 24 hours.

To avoid such cases, you should regularly check the license status using the GetInfo API. If the API turns into evaluation mode, please apply the metered license again.

Kindly note that if the license is metered, the response of the ‘GetInfo’ method would contain the ‘AdditionalInfo’ map with fields ‘ConsumptionCredit’ and ‘ConsumptionQuantity’. And when the license is not set/metered - the ‘AdditionalInfo’ field would be ‘NULL’.

Hello,

First, i do not think that there was a connection problem 10x in a row or multiple times in 24 hours. We are using a great hosting provider with a proper SLA. And our monitoring showed no problems with network on our side. There is no way that the container failed to communicate to licensing server for 24 hours, if the container only communicates out of the server. We do not allow incoming connections.
As said - the issue started occurring when the Docker container was upgraded - shows that something has changed regarding this.
Questions:

  1. As the new version does not log info anymore, how can i enable a debug log. Setting environment variable like this does not work:
    “Logging__LogLevel__Default”: “Debug”
  2. Is there a way to call GetInfo on the pre-made Docker container? We have no wish to modify the code in the container nor write our own code. We want to use out-of-the-box software that works.

This issue has to be resolved as for security reasons the container must be upgraded. However we cannot do this until the issue with evaluation mode is resolved.
Therefore please provide answers to the previous questions and offer out more alternatives - can we pre-purchase usage or can we purchase a different license?
The reason why we moved to on-premise Docker with Aspose, was the instability with the Cloud API provided by Aspose, which failed too much and caused us lot’s of issues. I hope the same won’t happen with licensing API and purchases.

@rainitavokaado

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Please note we have introduced GetInfo API method in Aspose.Words Cloud 22.9, Kindly try the latest version of Aspose.Words Cloud Docker Container and share the results.

@rainitavokaado

If the issue persists, then please share your public and private key via a private message for the investigation. We will try to reproduce the issue at our end and guide you accordingly.

@rainitavokaado

We have released a new version of Aspose.Words Cloud Docker Container. Please try and let us know if you still face any issues.

The issues you have found earlier (filed as WORDSCLOUD-2599) have been fixed in this update. This message was posted using Bugs notification tool by Ivanov_John