Zend Guard License Renewal and Encoded Application License Re-Generation

Applies To:

[ Zend Guard 5 and up ]
[ All operating systems ]

Question

Our Zend Guard software license expired recently hence it was renewed and we deployed the new license we got from Zend.

Zend Guard works fine for new products and licenses, but for some reason we cannot generate a working license for our old PHP encoded scripts.

Answer

The license is based on a private key which is based on the Guard license.

This private key can be exported while the software is still active, and at a later time imported to a new licensed Zend Guard (same machine or any other) to be used for basing licensing / encoding.

If you do not possess the private key originally used for encoding, and you do not have the original license (might check with Zend Support if we can still fetch it for you from your account records), there is a large chance you will need to re-encode the PHP application and new license(s), and deploy it to your client site to replace the old code and licenses.

With your old Guard license, you can "Detach" the private key from it and use it on new license generation and PHP encoding. You can find the detach from old license in the Security / Licensing section.

zendenc_sign CLI tool can also directly extract the private key from old Guard License.

The main reason for this "limitation" is purely security. If anyone but you is provided with a license for Zend Guard and they could use the product name and license your PHP application, the Zend Guard would have been useless to you as a trusted encoder.

Company Name

If you have changed your Zend account details and altered Name / Company fields prior to the generation of the new license, it might not work with private key of the old license. Please verify that the details are the same on the new and old license before importing old private key to new licensed Guard.

Guard Version

The private key import/export functionality has been added since Zend Guard 5, therefore we recommend upgrading from any prior version in order to get the most features and capabilities including obfuscation.

Usage note

Although it is not recommended due to privacy concerns, you can share a private key with another Zend Guard installation if it is in your interest. For example when you have 2 machines encoding licenses, or you have one Zend Guard with a GUI for encoding on the client side, and another Zend Guard installed via console mode on a web server providing licenses for your clients using a user based website. In normal situations you will probably export the private key for safe-keeping only.

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Excerpt: Zend Guard renewal license makes new licenses not valid for old applications based on different private key from installation. After Zend Guard license renewal, use the private key import/export to ensure you can issue a license to your deployed application.

Original Post Date: 2010-02-09 16:15:43

Updated: 2016-05-26 15:27:43

Alternative Description:

Zend Guard renewal license makes new licenses not valid for old applications based on different private key from installation

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