ModelSim and Questa Starter Ed.

Good question, and the short answer is: your Questa Starter Edition setup should not interfere with the existing ModelSim/FlexNet environment, provided the configuration you've described is correct. Here's why:

Separate environment variables, separate daemons

Questa – Altera FPGA Edition and Questa – Altera FPGA Starter Edition require a separate license daemon from the Altera FPGA software license daemon. Quartus Prime Pro Edition Version 26.1 Software and Device Support Release Notes In practice this means the two licensing stacks are independent:

• Questa Starter Edition uses the SALT_LICENSE_SERVER environment variable and the saltd vendor daemon.
• ModelSim (via Quartus 13.1) uses LM_LICENSE_FILE pointing to your existing FlexNet/lmgrd server with the alterad (or mgcld) daemon.

LM_LICENSE_FILE and MGLS_LICENSE_FILE are deprecated for Questa – Altera FPGA Edition and future versions will not read them. The license must now be set through SALT_LICENSE_SERVER. Prerequisites So Questa Starter reads SALT_LICENSE_SERVER and leaves LM_LICENSE_FILE alone — exactly the split you already have.
Only one instance of a given vendor daemon can run at a time on a single system, but alterad and saltd can co-exist. Upgrading the FLEXlm License Manager Server Software So running both simultaneously on the same machine is explicitly supported.

One thing to watch for with floating licenses

If you have both an Altera FPGA software license and a Questa Altera FPGA Edition software license, plus other Siemens EDA QuestaSim licenses, you can either merge all of them into a single file or put all Siemens EDA QuestaSim software licenses in a single file. If you put all Siemens EDA QuestaSim software licenses in a single file, you must remove the VENDOR saltd line from the Altera FPGA software license file. You cannot have Siemens EDA licenses split across two files for the same license server. Upgrading the FLEXlm License Manager Server Software Since you're using a node-locked file (not a floating server) for Questa Starter, this constraint doesn't apply to your current setup.

Regarding the Quartus 13.1 ModelSim license failure

That issue is unrelated to Questa Starter. The "Unable to checkout a license" message may appear when starting ModelSim-Altera Edition if the license daemon is out-of-date. The fix is to download the latest ModelSim-Altera license daemon from the License Daemon Downloads page and set up the license to use it. Unable to checkout a license. Make sure your license file environment variables are set correctly. Also worth checking: this error appears when running ModelSim-Altera software version 10.0c and later with the mgcld license daemon version 10.8 or older. ModelSim-Altera software version 10.0c requires mgcld version 11.6, and the fix is to download and install mgcld license daemon version 11.6. Error: FLEXlm version of the vendor daemon is too old: @

In summary: your environment variable split (SALT_LICENSE_SERVER for Questa Starter, LM_LICENSE_FILE for ModelSim) is the correct and supported configuration. Installing Questa Starter Edition should not affect your ModelSim license management. The ModelSim failure in Quartus 13.1 should be addressed by updating the mgcld license daemon independently.

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