blueirissoftware.com website down (2023.07.07)

[Flintstone61]

Is there a fix yet? It's hard to wade thru the bickering

I only need to apply my " one year of Maintenance and extended Support Key to this window, and that was all.
Auto-update was not on.

 

[nar1117]

Hi all, first post here after troubleshooting like lots of other folks. I have deactivated my BI instance, re-activated it with my license key, and tried to re-activate my active maintenance plan. Unfortunately, BI flips back into Eval mode within a few seconds after activation. And, entering the maintenance code returns the "This key has already been added to your license" message.

I've read a few pages back, but I have not seen any posts that cover a proper solution for this issue. Should I email support, or is there something I can check easily on my end to get my system activated again?

Thanks for the help in advance! Apologies for being part of the broken record. I'll keep reading posts going back in time to see if I can find a solution.

 

[GregoryGHarding]

The real conversation going forward should pivot to why blue iris hosting issues, takes down everyone's active license, prevents use of license, and bricks people's security. And what's going to be done to correct this issue so it doesn't happen again. All of us pay our hard earned doh to this company, to have our licenses invalidated and rendered useless, our security at risk, because of a website fault on their end is not the licensing solution we should be ok with.

 

[Ri22o]

Seems like a pretty simple explanation for the issue, to me.

I am guessing the randomness of the Eval screen had to do with the status of your license on the day the backup was taken and that status being reapplied when the backup was put back online.

Not much more to bicker or complain about.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

Thanks for sharing

Not much more to bicker or complain about.

One would think.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Blimey don’t envy that task of sorting through all the issued licenses and working out what needs to go where!

 

[nar1117]

Seems like a pretty simple explanation for the issue, to me.

I am guessing the randomness of the Eval screen had to do with the status of your license on the day the backup was taken and that status being reapplied when the backup was put back online.


View attachment 167556

Many thanks! I missed that post. I will reach out to support.

 

[Bob27]

Hi all, first post here after troubleshooting like lots of other folks. I have deactivated my BI instance, re-activated it with my license key, and tried to re-activate my active maintenance plan. Unfortunately, BI flips back into Eval mode within a few seconds after activation. And, entering the maintenance code returns the "This key has already been added to your license" message.

I've read a few pages back, but I have not seen any posts that cover a proper solution for this issue. Should I email support, or is there something I can check easily on my end to get my system activated again?

Thanks for the help in advance! Apologies for being part of the broken record. I'll keep reading posts going back in time to see if I can find a solution.

Fortunately (and unfortunately) I’m a packrat and save everything. I had this same issue until I looked at the date on the maintenance key email and discovered I was using a maintenance key from a couple years ago. Found my current maintenance key and that solved this problem for me.

 

[nar1117]

Fortunately (and unfortunately) I’m a packrat and save everything. I had this same issue until I looked at the date on the maintenance key email and discovered I was using a maintenance key from a couple years ago. Found my current maintenance key and that solved this problem for me.

I save everything too, so I looked for my most recent code, but the only one that was sent to me via the mycommerce payment system was my original purchase from a couple years ago. It seems as though the “subscribe” function for the maintenance cost does not send a receipt/updated license after the payment is authorized.

Regardless, I emailed support and Ken responded in a few minutes. Very impressive! All fixed now.

 

[Netwalker]

I'm guessing this is related? On the mobile app, if I press the "lookup key" button on the edit server settings page, I get "Blue Iris | Invalid server response".

 

[iankaufmann]

It took me many tries over the last few days to get it to work. I would deactivate my license, then re-add it, then go to add my maintenance key and it would say that it's already been used/attached to my license and I'd still be "Expired".

But it finally worked today and everything seems to be back to normal. I did have to restart everything before the watermark went away (the watermark weirdly was only showing on a single camera, and only on the JPEG output, not the recorded footage or the live display).

For the record I am still on v5.4.7.11 with update prompts turned off due to a specific part of my (unusual) setup and the relationship between BI, AI Tool/Deepstack, and Home Assistant/MQTT that breaks when I update any further. I know a lot of AI stuff is built in now but my setup pre-dates that and it's dialed in so perfectly that I don't want to change it!

 

[fenderman]

The real conversation going forward should pivot to why blue iris hosting issues, takes down everyone's active license, prevents use of license, and bricks people's security. And what's going to be done to correct this issue so it doesn't happen again. All of us pay our hard earned doh to this company, to have our licenses invalidated and rendered useless, our security at risk, because of a website fault on their end is not the licensing solution we should be ok with.

You spent $60... Don't make it sound like you spent $5,000....
They have already announced that they will make changes... If you are not happy with those changes there are 100 alternatives to Blue Iris... Let us know which one you choose..

 

[fenderman]

I'm guessing this is related? On the mobile app, if I press the "lookup key" button on the edit server settings page, I get "Blue Iris | Invalid server response".

Yes

 

[oldandre]

FWIIW: I tried Zoneminder when one of the BI maintenance subs came due. Freeware, install on Linux. Installed a test camera, configured same with motion triggers. It worked.
Scurried back to BI. $30 a year is a bargain, IMO.

 

[wittaj]

The real conversation going forward should pivot to why blue iris hosting issues, takes down everyone's active license, prevents use of license, and bricks people's security. And what's going to be done to correct this issue so it doesn't happen again. All of us pay our hard earned doh to this company, to have our licenses invalidated and rendered useless, our security at risk, because of a website fault on their end is not the licensing solution we should be ok with.

Keep in mind this didn't happen to everyone. How many people didn't have a problem and are oblivious that a problem even occurred?

The developer has made it clear that he will find a way to ensure it doesn't happen again. This was some fluke thing where everything aligned for a failure of the magnitude that couldn't be anticipated.

Have you ever had a vehicle recalled? Thousands of people are working for a car manufacturer and yet $#!+ still happened.

Banks and other companies that spend millions of dollars on internet security still get hacked.

On the camera front big time NDAA compliant Axis, a $1 billion/year company with 4,000 employees, was hacked last year and their systems went down for several days. Their customers utilizing their total solutions could not even access their video feeds. At least if you were impacted by the BI problem, you could still have video. Video with an evaluation watermark is better than no video for days...

BI is one guy and has done a tremendous job.

Find a program as robust and as cheap as BI and let us know about it.

And don't even think of going to any cloud based system because they have all experienced downtime where you then have no video feed as well.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Didn’t the FB post explain what happened. Server hard disk died, current backups no good, they reverted to restoring the last good backup which was from a year ago, this is when all the problems started as presumably the backup didn’t have licenses or support renewals purchased during that year.

 

[TonyR]

Didn’t the FB post explain what happened.

Pretty much, IMO.

 

[wittaj]

I think many may read your quote and think it comes off as sounding entitled and unrealistic, but I think this is a valid concern with how the BI DRM is implemented, the resources behind the project, and how it disrupts your control over the software. Situations like this can and do happen to large security vendors as well, but this event somewhat confirms that BI is not the magic bullet fully-featured software that gives you complete control that some people claim it to be. If your perpetually-licensed security server can't talk to BI's server, you can have issues down the road if you continue to use the software long-term, which could limit my desire to deploy it in mission critical "industrial" environments.

The BI developer has done a fantastic job of creating the application and he certainly deserves to protect his software sales from piracy, but that means we now have to deal with the liability of DRM in our security systems. I'd understand if open-source tools had a similar outage to this, but I wish that paid security software, regardless of price, takes strong safeguards to prevent this from happening. High-availability webhosting platforms are becoming more and more affordable, and most/all non-consumer backup options have the ability to test full system images to ensure they were bootable and fire critical alerts when there are failures, so regardless of unexpected hardware failure the result could have been reduced/eliminated. I trust that the developer will make sure that a similar drive failure and backup issue doesn't take down BI again, but there are lots of things to account for. Unless the base DRM changes we could easily end up in the same boat tomorrow if BI's CDN blocks them or suffers an outage, or if BI's hosting location gets hit with a power outage, or if a fiber line from the hosting location gets cut, or...

I love BI, but I think its a good wakeup to those who think that it's an $80 magic bullet to solve all security woes, shooting down anything else in the market. Would all this be fixed if the software cost more so that the team could expand, or if it went open-source? No clue, but that's my two-cents from someone who has planned IT/business continuity procedures for awhile.

What makes you think that now that this failure happened and has been identified that the developer isn't working on a fix so that this doesn't happen in the future?

Why is it not everyone was impacted?

How is is that people using V3 and V4, well outside of support, along with older V5 versions out of support continued to work without a hiccup?

How is it that many people have their BI computer isolated from the internet and it still works.

It sounds like everything aligned wrongly such that the backup he had to go to ended up resulting in a block of people based on when they purchased/renewed/whatever you want to call it to have an issue.

I could be completely wrong, but from what people have posted, it sounds like most of the people that had an issue were February to June 2022 purchases/renewals and when the older backup went on line, those pinged as invalid. I am sure some had it happen outside the time frame to for whatever reason, but now that an issue has been identified, don't we owe him the ability to fix it?

Show me a more robust system for the price and I am sure many would consider changing, but it doesn't exist.

 

[lulu5kamz]

Geez, can't believe all the hysterics displayed over this problem.
I guess it's Just like people that don't lock their cars, then whine that their car "was broken into".
Get a grip people.
By the way, I'm another one that has always had automatic updates turned off, and I've not had any license issues on two different systems during all this.

I also run BI on 2 different computers and have not had any of the above problems.

 

[oldandre]

In one installation, we use a hardware NVR, name brand. During a thunderstorm, the NVR failed. Fortunately, I managed to figure out that the 5 volt regulator had failed and patch in an external 5 volt power supply. The camera network was down for 2 days before I could get it and fix it. If we had to order a new NVR, that would probably have added another day. What if your Blue Iris computer failed, do you have a hot spare? Perhaps this wake up call should address all potential points of failure.

Like someone said, Murphy is out there..... waiting.