How do I delete client from a perforce server that won't start

Question

I have finally got around to upgrading my perforce server to 2014.

I had a single user Admin Licence, but didn't pay yearly upgrade as I though new free licence would suit me - 20 clients. I just removed the old licence file.

I didn't realise I had 29 clients.

I get this error message

C:\Program Files\Perforce\NewServer>p4d
Perforce server error:
    Unlicensed server cannot start while over user/client quota.
    Try deleting old clients with 'client -d'.
    License count: 29 clients used of 20 licensed.

Is there a way I can select 29 clients to delete? obviously p4 client command won't connect as the server isnt running. Can I run that command against p4d or something similar?

I will contact perforce support on Monday, but wondered if there was anything I could do myself.

Answer 1

We just got hit by this. In the end we issued a

"p4d -n -p 1666" 

which put us into maintenance mode. We could then delete client specs. After deleting a few we could start the server again.

Answer 2

I don't know if there is a solution to what I wanted to do, but this is how i solved it.

I had created a full backup of my perforce directory before upgrade.

1. Unzip backup
2. Open 'cmd' in backup dir
3. run p4dfrom commandline, starting the perforce server
4. connect with normal p4v client
5. Delete all the additional clients
6. Shut down p4d window to kill perforce instance
7. Create Checkpoint
8. Delete db.* files from real folder
9. Restore newly created checkpoint to real folder.

All working now.