Why is my 6.2 license slave not working with my 6.1.4 license master?

[jdastmalchi_spl]

I have License master splunk version 6.1.4. I have now installed 6.2 version on some servers and these servers don't work as license slaves with 6.1.4 license master.
Is there a version incompatibility? Does the license master need to be the same version?
I get these errors on the license master:
11-18-2014 09:38:42.363 +0000 ERROR LMHttpUtil - signature mismatch between computed and actual for uri /services/masterlm/usage
11-18-2014 09:38:42.363 +0000 ERROR LMMasterRestHandler - path=/masterlm/usage: invalid signature on request from ip=10.73.1.206

[dkolekar_splunk]

A license master must always be of equal or later version than its license slaves.

[splunkreal]

Hello,

Our test environment uses production LM and we never had any compatibility issue upgrading first test nodes :

6.2.3 > 6.5.2

6.5.2 > 7.1.4

7.1.4 > 7.3.4

We plan to upgrade 7.3.4 to 8.2.2, any possible issue?

Thanks

[jdastmalchi_spl · Accepted solution]

in server.conf you have a key "pass4SymmKey" under the General stanza "[general]" this is not to be mistaken with the pass4SymKey used for clustering. This pass4SymmKey is used in the license master/slave communication. So you may have set this password in $SPLUNK-HOME/system/local/server.conf

[general]
pass4SymmKey = test

If you set this in 6.1.4 after restarting splunk it saves it as plain text and does not get encrypted, however the same password in 6.2 after restart will get encrypted and will look something like this "pass4SymmKey = $1$W5xMFCIb8FGj”.

As long as you understand this and respect the difference it will work, if you suspect this is wrong and copy paste the encrypted pass to the license master this will break the communication as the behaviorrs are different.

[cirkit1]

Can you just copy the encrypted pass4symmkey string to the other license slaves nodes?

Or do you have to have the plain text version and enter into the pass4symmkey key, restart, and let it encrypt it?

[cirkit1]

IF i were to reset the pass4symmkey in the [general] stanza on the license master, will it have any impact to the pass4symmkey in the [clustering] stanza?

just want to make sure these are 2 separate pass4symmkey for 2 different purposes (licensing vs clustering) and hoping one does not affect the other.

[j0shrice]

Was there any update here if it will affect say a Deployer's connection. We are getting this error only on the deployer

[andrey2007]

As I understood from answer in case of 2 clusters which use same License master you must have same pass4SymmKey in general stanza in both clusters? And what is about reverse compatibility when I have 6.2 License master with specified pass4Symmkey and 6.1.5 slaves without such parameter?

[thomas_forbes]

I had the same issue, but this suggested fix did nothing to help. I am not sure what is going on.