Q100050: Foundry License Utility (FLU) immediately crashes on Mac

SYMPTOMS

Foundry License Utility (FLU) immediately crashes on Mac

CAUSE

The FLU looks for a machine's hardware ethernet addresses (of the Media Access Controller, or MAC) in order to find a "system ID". When Apple hardware became capable of connecting an ethernet network directly to peripheral equipment connected to the Mac via the Thunderbolt (a.k.a. "lightning") socket, the search function of the FLU would fail when it found too many addresses.

RESOLUTION

The way this bug manifests on a Mac is when you connect multiple displays and/or other devices via the Thunderbolt connectors on a Mac, then

the Foundry License Utility (FLU) will not run, and

some types of our licenses also fail. For example, some older Nuke licenses will crash Nuke on startup when it tries to get a license.