# ILok Software Component Unavailable issue on Mac



## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 5, 2022)

Greetings to anyone that reads my concern,

I have an issue that's been bothering me for a month now. I have been getting a "Software Component Unavailable" error when opening my iLok manager app. My first solution was to reinstall the app and it opened fine after that. But later in the day after using Logic on my Mac etc... the error message is back and Logic also displays a Fatal Error message stating :

"The PACE License Support software required to validate the license for this product is not running" which appears to be related to the iLok software component error message.

So every time I want to run my licences correctly in my DAW, I have to delete the iLok app and reinstall it so that my DAW can only work for the next single time I use it. The only thing I haven't done properly is uninstalling the iLok app because when I run the Uninstall License Support I get a weird Fatal Error stating :

"The LicenseD unload script returned an error: 1"

I haven't seen a viable solution on any forum so if you happen to know how to fix this, I'd be more than grateful !

(I've linked the error message coming from the iLok uninstaller, by the way I'm running an M1 MacBook Pro with macOS Ventura 13.0.1)


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## SirkusPi (Dec 5, 2022)

Just checked on my 2019 intel iMac still running MacOS 12 Monterey, and no problems there, so maybe something to do with Ventura? Did the problem just start after upgrading to Ventura (or to 13.0.1, if the initial release from just 13.0)? Or did the problem just start happening out of the blue?


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## gamma-ut (Dec 5, 2022)

It sounds as though the daemon/background task they use to check for licences isn't able to run for some reason.

If you go into Terminal and type (you will need to enter your login password for the command to complete - it's just listing stuff and will do nothing to your machine):

sudo launchctl list | grep paceap

You should see something like "com.paceap.eden.licensed" appear.

If not that's probably where the problem lies, though what's causing it to stop is the issue and that could be specific to your machine – possibly some permissions that are messed up. It's probably going to be safest to go to PACE/iLok tech support as diagnosing it may need logs etc. And they can tell you what needs removing manually to do a full uninstall/reinstall cycle.


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 5, 2022)

SirkusPi said:


> Just checked on my 2019 intel iMac still running MacOS 12 Monterey, and no problems there, so maybe something to do with Ventura? Did the problem just start after upgrading to Ventura (or to 13.0.1, if the initial release from just 13.0)? Or did the problem just start happening out of the blue?


Thanks for answering. Actually great question, I'm not quite sure but it might've definitely happened since I updated to Ventura !


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 5, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> It sounds as though the daemon/background task they use to check for licences isn't able to run for some reason.
> 
> If you go into Terminal and type (you will need to enter your login password for the command to complete - it's just listing stuff and will do nothing to your machine):
> 
> ...


Thanks for your input, I've executed the command and the com.paeap.eden.licensed component doesn't appear so I guess there surely is something missing here. I'll definitely message iLok tech support for more infos !


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## gamma-ut (Dec 5, 2022)

My guess is that it's trying to load an older component that needs to run under Rosetta, but it can't for some reason, rather than an updated Arm-based version – and the updater can't replace the offending file. So you're in this Catch 22 where the uninstaller script barfs when it doesn't see the agent running so you can uninstall it completely and get the newer one to run.

(This may be completely wrong, but it's my best guess.)

There seems to be a related issue on Windows machines where the agent starts too late – and which generates the same error – and I've seen some reports in a search of agent-loading problems on OS X where a similar situation crops up: the Rosetta process that could run the iLok one starts too late after boot, so the OS just decides the agent's code is incompatible.


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 5, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> My guess is that it's trying to load an older component that needs to run under Rosetta, but it can't for some reason, rather than an updated Arm-based version – and the updater can't replace the offending file. So you're in this Catch 22 where the uninstaller script barfs when it doesn't see the agent running so you can uninstall it completely and get the newer one to run.
> 
> (This may be completely wrong, but it's my best guess.)
> 
> There seems to be a related issue on Windows machines where the agent starts too late – and which generates the same error – and I've seen some reports in a search of agent-loading problems on OS X where a similar situation crops up: the Rosetta process that could run the iLok one starts too late after boot, so the OS just decides the agent's code is incompatible.


I'm not quite sure what all of this means 😅 but I'll make sure to notify you if I get a solution from iLok's tech support team !


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 6, 2022)

I just checked iLok's website and it seems like there are actual problems with MacOS Ventura where Macs don't identify iLok License Manager as Avid Pro Tools. I guess I just have to be patient, it shouldn't take to much time before they fix this !


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## HCMarkus (Dec 6, 2022)

Thanks for reminding me to avoid the temptation to upgrade any macOS until version x.3 is ready!


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 7, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> Thanks for reminding me to avoid the temptation to upgrade any macOS until version x.3 is ready!


I found the solution and it didn't have anything to do with Ventura in my case ! Turns out I had disabled Avid Pro Tools from my background apps in my login items settings. Re-enabling it fixed the issue !


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## gamma-ut (Dec 7, 2022)

I think it's worth reporting as a bug to Avid in that case: disabling Pro Tools as a background app shouldn't cause the iLok agent to stop running as PT is far from the only bit of software to use it. On a machine without PT there's no control over the iLok/PACE agent in login items – you have to go into the plumbing of OS X's agent-launcher to do that.


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 7, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> I think it's worth reporting as a bug to Avid in that case: disabling Pro Tools as a background app shouldn't cause the iLok agent to stop running as PT is far from the only bit of software to use it. On a machine without PT there's no control over the iLok/PACE agent in login items – you have to go into the plumbing of OS X's agent-launcher to do that.


Yeah it's very weird and plus I don't use Pro Tools on my Mac... It might sound very dumb but I don't even recall installing it 😐


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## gamma-ut (Dec 7, 2022)

Avid Link maybe? That installs the login item, apparently.


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 7, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> Avid Link maybe? That installs the login item, apparently.


No, I just double checked but I don't seem to have any Avid programs...


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## gamma-ut (Dec 7, 2022)

If you want to see when it happened - and it might be helpful for anyone who suffers a similar problem, you can look in /private/var/db/receipts for anything that begins *com.avid... *(In Finder, you'll need to select Go->Go to Folder... to get there as it doesn't show up in the normal view). 

You may not be that worried about finding out though it might be worth it if you need to get rid of some unwanted things lurking in important places as it's already had an unfortunate effect on the applications running on the machine.

This folder contains all the installation receipts or records for the Mac (assuming they haven't been deleted at some point).

You can use quicklook to look at the .bom files, which will show what the relevant package had in it.


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## Paul Thiébaut (Dec 7, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> If you want to see when it happened - and it might be helpful for anyone who suffers a similar problem, you can look in /private/var/db/receipts for anything that begins *com.avid... *(In Finder, you'll need to select Go->Go to Folder... to get there as it doesn't show up in the normal view).
> 
> You may not be that worried about finding out though it might be worth it if you need to get rid of some unwanted things lurking in important places as it's already had an unfortunate effect on the applications running on the machine.
> 
> ...


I don't have any com.avid file in this repertory, very strange...


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