Unity Issue Tracker - Cannot activate license within a docker container

Fixed in 2020.2

Fixed in 2019.4, 2020.1

Votes

19

Found in

2018.4

Issue ID

1193364

Regression

Yes

Cannot activate license within a docker container

Windows

Oct 22, 2019

Following this bug report in our forums (https://forum.unity.com/threads/batch-mode-license-activation-fails-in-a-docker-container.748325/), we have discovered that the reason that the license activation fails from within this docker instance is that our implementation of GetInternetReachability seems to fail within the docker container.

I didn't double-check the instance given by the customer ("matissehack/unity"), and can only assume that it represents the same thing that we would have if we had built it ourselves.

Basically, we call CoCreateInstance(CLSID_NetworkListManager, ...), and then call GetConnectivity on the returned instance. This latter call fails, which (eventually) prevents license activation.

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17648194/how-can-i-start-my-application-when-network-connection-is-available

Note: the above description was for a bug that a client reported using Unity within a Windows docker container.
But it became an umbrella for more bugs using Unity within a Linux docker container.

Resolution Note (fix version 2020.2):

The docker instance masks the machine Id (/etc/machine-id), required for building the license file.
It is not acceptable that it be left empty.
Resolution Note (fix version 2020.1):

Fixed in version 2020.1.0f1
Resolution Note (fix version 2019.4):

Fixed in version 2019.4.7f1

Comments (7)

Unity2-3drepo

Jun 18, 2020 15:54

We were using containers successfully until 2019.3. We only just upgraded to 2019.3
btristan

Feb 27, 2020 22:13

+1

This is blocking an upgrade to Unity 2019.3 in Ubuntu containers as well.
Sarbakan-Support

Feb 13, 2020 13:45

Looks like we can't upgrade to 2019.3 or 2020.1 either.
At least this issue was reopened after being marked as "won't fix" at first.
Filiecs

Feb 11, 2020 17:26

If this is not fixed it will prevent us from upgrading to 2019.3.
danielo_unity

Feb 10, 2020 17:54

After further investigation, this API (INetworkListManager::GetConnectivity) was found to be not working because the netprofm service ("Network List Service") is disabled within this container (matissehack/unity) or the base image, either by accident or by design.
Re-enabling netprofm is insufficient, as it depends on another service (nlasvc), which must also be re-enabled.
Furthermore, another critical service is also required, by licensing and perhaps elsewhere: WMI (wmiApSrv).
I have not investigated beyond this point (license activation passes), but would speculate that there will be other issues (not a huge amount, but some).
docker is not really used internally. We use VMs. docker support will take time and effort (and users).
Nepoxx

Feb 06, 2020 16:29

How is "won't fix" acceptable for this issue?

There's no explanation as to why, nor any workarounds. There's a lot of people using this to automate their Unity builds, this is clearly not acceptable.

I feel like you guys are actively making sure automating our builds is a pain to sell your Unity cloud build.
fake_aki

Nov 12, 2019 12:02

Seems like the check is just done the wrong way around, since INetworkListManager::GetConnectivity is obviously not an authoritative source of knowledge in practice. The right way would be to attempt to connect to the service first, and to perform a general Internet connectivity check on the network interface as an additional diagnostic if it fails.

Running Unity in a Docker container is a common pattern for building CI, so this is going to present a major blocker to updating for many people. In our case, releases up to 2019.1 are working well, but with 2019.3 betas we've started to run into trouble.

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19

2018.4

1193364

Yes

Cannot activate license within a docker container

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