Courier 2.5 - how to retrieve license file?

Questions
1

I have an old Umbraco 7 website running on 2 environments - UAT and Production. Courier 2.5 is used to transfer content between them, and a content item isn’t getting updated as expected.

I attempted to install Courier locally, add UAT as a target environment and check the Courier graph to see if I need to create a custom converter or not, but am having issues running Courier locally as UAT is not on the same machine, so when I attempt to transfer it’s asking me for a valid license.

I checked the bin folder for both Production and UAT and can’t find a .lic file, so I’m trying to see if anyone has had this issue before and what my options are. I remember dev licenses being a thing for that version of Courier, but not sure if they can still be issued?

Any suggestions would be massively helpful. Thanks.

2

Hi @andreicanef,

I have not used Courier 2.5 but did some research regarding the issue and found some links. Please check it out. Hope it might help.

Here are some ways to debug:
Courier validates both ends. Since you couldn’t find the .lic file on UAT, the error you are seeing locally is likely because UAT itself is failing the license check during the handshake.

Because Umbraco 7 is EOL and we can’t generate new dev licenses to fix the Local → UAT bridge, the fastest way to solve this is to skip the local Courier setup entirely.

Instead, force UAT to tell you what is failing by turning on Courier’s debug logging directly on the UAT server:

  1. Open ~/config/log4net.config on UAT.
  2. Add: <logger name="Umbraco.Courier"><level value="DEBUG" /></logger>
  3. Trigger the transfer from UAT to Production (If they are already connected and working fine).
  4. Check the logs in ~/App_Data/Logs/ for the failing Node ID to see which property/dependency is breaking the graph.

I would recommend trying alternatives if nothing works:

Just to add to it; If you had bought the license for this product, try connecting with Umbraco, they might help with retrieving an existing legacy license that you have already paid for.

3

Hi @andreicanef

Welcome to the forum!

A few things I found that may help:

Courier 2.5 only runs unrestricted when both ends are on your local machine - as soon as UAT is remote, the licence check kicks in on both sides via the host header.

Cleanest workaround: restore the UAT DB locally, spin up two local IIS sites (e.g. uat.local and prod.local), configure them as Courier repos of each other. Both ends local = no licence needed, and you get a much nicer environment for debugging the graph / building a custom resolver anyway.

For the missing .lic - check /App_Data/Licenses/, /config/courier.config, and the umbracoCourier* DB tables. The Courier dashboard in the Prod back office will also show the registered domains, which often includes 2 dev domains you can point at localhost via hosts file.

New licences are basically a non-starter - Courier hit EOL March 2022 - but if the client bought it originally, you can re-download from their umbraco.com profile and reconfigure the dev domains.

Justin

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