Upgrades are prohibited during License Grace Period and licexpiry.txt location

You might sometime find yourself in the position where you need to manipulate files on Cisco CUCM, such as the licexpiry.txt file. Some background on that particular situation can be found here: https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3923028#3923028

This is something you need to have TAC assist with, as they have methods to generate temporary root access to the Linux OS and these files can't be accessed via the normal platform administration CLI commands.

You may also realize there are plenty of documented methods to gain root access on a Cisco CUCM server yourself, but my favorite, in that it includes good screen shots and Vi text editing keystrokes help can be found here: http://htluo.blogspot.com/2011/08/root-access-on-cucm-and-other-uc.html

Of course, you shouldn't do this.  It's unsupported by Cisco, Cisco TAC, likely voids warranties and service contracts, could be illegal, and who knows what else.  Don't do it.

When Cisco TAC is assisting you, you might find some of the documentation associated with removing the licexpiry.txt file is incorrect.

So...

To find the actual location of the file, you Cisco TAC could run:

find / -iname licexpiry.txt

This should return the real location of the file, something like:

/usr/local/platform/conf/licexpiry.txt

With that information, to remove the file you can run:

cd /usr/local/platform/conf
rm licexpiry.txt

Good luck, maniacs.

Edit 9/30/2013: see http://webmaxtor.blogspot.com/2013/09/upgrades-are-prohibited-during-license.html for some additional information on gaining access to the CUCM file system.