Home/ Questions/Q 301565
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T07:01:02+00:00

DISCLAIMER: While I’m trying to do this to fool a license enforcement scheme, the

  • 0

DISCLAIMER: While I’m trying to do this to fool a license enforcement scheme, the company is out of business and I’m only setting up a test server. I don’t consider this stealing (as a developer that sells software myself, I wouldn’t do that) since I can’t pay for another license if I wanted to. However, if the community disagrees, please vote to close this question. Just want to be upfront about this.

We use a server app that, as part of its license enforcement, confirms that “SELECT @@SERVERNAME” matches the license installed on the server. I’m setting up a test instance of this application, but since the license I have is locked to a particular servername, I’m stuck.

Is there a way that I can fool @@SERVERNAME into returning something else? Change the internal name of the server to something different than the DNS name? I know there are SQL Server problems if you rename a server, and maybe I can exploit this to accomplish what I need to (rename the server to the licensed name, install SQL, then rename the server so it doesn’t conflict with our production server).

If there is another, non-hacky way to accomplish this (set up an isolated domain, use a virtual server with no network connection, etc), I’d entertain those options as well. What does the community think is the easiest way to get this done?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It actually looks possible to set the server name property.

    SQL 2000: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa933172(SQL.80).aspx
SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174411(SQL.90).aspx
SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187944.aspx
    • 0