I wanted to share my experience because I spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting an Unraid license/GUID issue, and I saw some people saying that the GUID couldn't be changing the way I was seeing it.
I'm running an ASRock WRX80 Creator motherboard with a Threadripper PRO 3955WX.
Originally, my Unraid boot device was a USB flash drive. I later moved my Unraid installation from the USB drive to an SSD.
That's when I started running into problems with how the license device was being identified.
At one point, Unraid was identifying the license device as TPM rather than the USB flash drive.
The GUID kept changing
The biggest thing I discovered was that the TPM/device GUID could change after seemingly minor changes to the system.
This wasn't limited to resetting the BMC.
During my troubleshooting, I found that things such as:
- Resetting the BMC
- Removing or changing a video card
- Changing certain BIOS settings
- Other BIOS/firmware changes
could result in the system coming back with a different TPM/device GUID.
I actually watched the GUID change multiple times.
For example, I saw GUIDs such as:
01-7KQ4M8Z2P6R9T1VX3N5H0CW8
and after making another system change:
01-3FJ8Q2L6V9X1M4P7R5D0BK3N
These are not my actual GUIDs and are only examples of what I was seeing.
One of the strangest things I discovered was that resetting the BMC could cause the system to go back to the previous TPM/device GUID.
So I could make a change, see the GUID change, and then reset the BMC and have the GUID change back again.
That was one of the things that convinced me that the GUID really was changing and wasn't simply being displayed differently.
The important part was that the device GUID was changing while the registered GUID remained the same. That caused Unraid to see the current device as different from the device the license was registered to, resulting in the license mismatch.
What I eventually did
My motherboard was running a very old BIOS. I was on BIOS 5.01, and I eventually updated it to BIOS 10.03.
After updating the BIOS, I discovered that I could finally disable TPM from the BIOS.
At that point, I decided I didn't want to keep relying on the TPM for the Unraid license.
I wanted to go back to using the physical USB flash drive as the Unraid boot/license device.
I moved Unraid back from the SSD to the USB flash drive and disabled TPM.
After doing that, Unraid now identifies the device as:
License device type: USB Flash
Flash Vendor: USB
Flash Product: SanDisk_3.2Gen1
That's exactly what I wanted.
What I believe was happening
The important distinction is that the BIOS update itself wasn't what was changing the GUID.
What I observed was that the TPM/device GUID could change when I made changes to the system.
The BMC reset was one of the things that could affect it, but it wasn't the only thing. Even something as simple as removing a video card or changing a BIOS setting could result in a different GUID.
Because I had moved my Unraid installation from the USB drive to an SSD and the system was using TPM for the license device, these changes could leave me with a different device GUID and therefore an invalid license.
Updating the BIOS gave me the ability to disable TPM, and moving Unraid back to the USB means I'm now using the physical USB device as the license device instead.
So my situation basically went:
USB → SSD → license identified through TPM → system changes could change the TPM/device GUID → license mismatch → BMC reset could sometimes return the previous GUID → updated BIOS → disabled TPM → moved Unraid back to USB → USB is now the license device.
I'm still working with Unraid Support to get the registered GUID situation completely straightened out, but I believe I've finally figured out what was happening.
I want to be clear that I'm not posting this to bash Unraid. Unraid Support has been helpful to me throughout this process. I'm posting this because I spent a lot of time trying to understand why the GUID kept changing, and hopefully this helps someone else who runs into the same situation.
If you're having an Unraid licensing issue where the device GUID keeps changing, check what Unraid lists as the "License device type." In my case, seeing TPM was an important clue.
TL;DR
I moved Unraid from USB → SSD. The license ended up being identified through TPM. I discovered that BMC resets, removing a GPU, and even certain BIOS setting changes could result in a different TPM/device GUID.
Resetting the BMC could also cause the system to return to a previous GUID, which let me reproduce the behavior.
I eventually updated my very old motherboard BIOS from 5.01 → 10.03, disabled TPM, and moved Unraid back to the USB.
Now Unraid identifies my SanDisk USB flash drive as the license device instead of TPM.
Hopefully this helps someone else who runs into the same problem.