Validating and Troubleshooting your Mule License

How to download and install the Mule license file

You may check if the License key is available on the MuleSoft Help Center portal following the instructions in the documentation Download Your License Key File. If the license key is unavailable here then please contact your MuleSoft account representative or the MuleSoft sales team to acquire an Enterprise license.

Once the license file is available, follow the MuleSoft documentation to Install an Enterprise License.

Known Problems when installing license.lic

Sometimes, the license.lic appears to install correctly, but on restarting the server the following error (or similar) appears

ERROR 2021-10-28 13:27:48,007 [Thread-1] [processor: ; event: ] com.mulesource.licm.impl.TrueLicenseHelper: Couldn't validate license key!

In the scenarios below, the license was successfully installed with Mule's command line installer (see reference to the documentation below) but failed with the above error on Mule startup.

1. muleLicenseKey.lic already existed in the /conf directory and could not be replaced. Delete / rename / move the existing muleLicenseKey.lic file before starting the license install process.
2. a blank space exists in the MULE_HOME path. i.e., there is a directory name that has a space character, for example, "Program Files" on Windows. Directory naming with white space should be avoided and the location of Mule should not contain whitespaces.
3. If running as a Windows Service, it may be necessary to uninstall and re-install the service.
4. The command used to install the license is not well-formed and the license didn’t install. Please check the command you used matches the Install an Enterprise License.
5. The Mule server was not shut down before executing the -installLicense command.

How to validate the license

Validating the license will confirm if the license has become corrupt. Both the license.lic and muleLicenseKey.lic files can be validated. If the above steps don’t resolve your issue, then the next step would be to check the validity and entitlement associated with your Mule license file. There are two methods to do this.

Validate the license that you have installed on Mule by running

mule -verifyLicense

The sample output of the license verification will be as follows.

License information Evaluation = false, Expiration Date = Tue May 19 00:00:00 UTC 2025, Contact Name = John Doe, Contact Email Address = john.doe@company.com, Contact Telephone = 00000000, Contact Company = Local Global Ltd, Contact Country = US, Entitlements = clustering,api-gateway

"Evaluation = false" means the license is for deployment to development or production Mule instance.
"Evaluation = true" means the license is for evaluation or trial purposes only.

If your subscription has expired (see “Expiration Date”), then check the license.lic file that you have received before you installed it (see below).  If there is an issue with the license, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Account Executive to make the arrangements for a new license. If you are unaware of who these contacts are, MuleSoft Support can identify them for you.

If your subscription is current, but the license appears to be corrupt, then please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Account Executive or the MuleSoft sales team to receive a lcinse file again and proceed to re-install it following Install an Enterprise License. Please ensure that you stop your server before the installation of a new license (or it won’t install!)

The last method to check the license would be to look into the Mule_ee logs. This is an example of the license when it appears correctly in the license file.

--> Wrapper Started as Console
Java Service Wrapper Standard Edition 64-bit 3.5.45
  Copyright (C) 1999-2021 Tanuki Software, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
    http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com
  Licensed to MuleSoft Inc. for Mule Runtime Enterprise Edition

Launching a JVM...

Valid license key --> Evaluation = false, Expiration Date = Fri Jan 13 23:59:59 GMT 2030, Contact Name = John Doe, Contact Email
Address = jdoe@mulesoft.com, Contact Telephone = \+999999999999, Contact Company = MuleSoft , Contact Country = AMER, 
Entitlements = as2-connector,ftps,ibm-ctg-connector,as2,datamapper,ftps-connector,mulemq,edifact,peoplesoft-connector,galaxy-ee,sap-s4hana-connector,
hl7,b2b,rosettanet,api-gateway,siebel-connector,oracleebs-connector,epicbridges-connector,x12,clustering,tradacoms,sap-connector,service-registry

I have a cluster; how do I check this?

For clustered servers, you can use any of the above methods for each individual server - for example, the individual server logs, when they come up shows license information.

Does Mule stop running should my license expire while my Mule instance is running?

Mule checks the license only on startup; when the license expires the error will appear on the next restart. This, of course, means that if Mule is executing when the license expires, it will continue to run until the next time Mule is stopped. However, note that some operations that perform license verification might fail, notably some Select and Premium connectors perform license checks while executing.

WARNING: If you are running Mule with an expired license and the server restarts for any reason (planned or unplanned) it won't be able to start again until the license is updated. This could lead to a significant service outage so we strongly suggest planning license updates in advance of the license expiration date.