Device Management Issues Resolved in 2024.11

The following issue with device management was resolved in the 2024.11 release.

Replacing Control Characters in Device Names

Note:This resolved issue is a continuation of the issues Additional Control Characters Considered by Configuration Option “Retain Non-Printing Characters in Device ID and Alias” in the 2024.08 release and Devices Page Now Loading Correctly When Device Name Includes Invalid Control Characters” in the 2023.05 release (see the FlexNet Operations 2023 Release Notes).

Previously, when a device was created using a capability request and the “Device ID” or “Alias” field contained a control character, the Devices page did not load as expected. As part of the initial fix, made in the 2023.05 release, control characters in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field were replaced with an empty string (for example, the device name Test^BName was saved as TestName).

In the 2024.11 release, all control characters are replaced with their respective hexadecimal values. For example, the device name Test^BName will be saved as TestName.

As a result, devices using control characters in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field are now displayed on the Devices page in FlexNet Operations.

However, when a control character is used in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field and subsequently removed by FlexNet Operations, the license will not be processed by the FlexNet Embedded toolkit. This is a known issue (see FNO-68962: Invalid Characters in Device ID Causing Issues ).

The following table shows examples of control characters and their referenced hexadecimal values:

Control Character in Caret Notation

Symbol Code

Hexadecimal Code

^F

ACK("\u0006" ( CTRL+F ))



^C

ETX("\u0003"(CTRL+C))



^^

RS("\u001e" ( CTRL+~ ))



^A

SOH("\u0001" ( CTRL+A ))



^V

SYN("\u0016 " ( CTRL+V ))



^_

US("\u001f "( CTRL+? ))



Changed Behavior of Configuration Option Controlling the Character Replacement

The 2023.05 release introduced the configuration option Retain Non-Printing Characters in Device ID and Alias (located under System > Configure > Embedded Devices > Host Options). Note the following changes in behavior since the 2023.05 release:

• When Retain Non-Printing Characters in Device ID and Alias is selected:
• Any control characters in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field are retained when the device is created. This behavior is the same in 2023.05 through 2024.11.
• When Retain Non-Printing Characters in Device ID and Alias is unselected:
• Behavior in 2024.11: Control characters in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field are replaced with their respective hexadecimal values.
• Behavior in 2023.05 - 2024.10: Control characters in the “Device ID” or “Alias” field are replaced with an empty string.

Note that by default, Retain Non-Printing Characters in Device ID and Alias is unselected.