Setting Up FlexNet Publisher License Server (R2023)

Scientific Analog, Inc. offers two types of licensing models: floating (concurrent) licensing and node-locked licensing. And its products, XMODEL, GLISTER, and MODELZEN use FlexNet Publisher from Flexera Software, LLC to administer the usages of their licensed features. This guide describes a step-by-step procedure to install and setup the FlexNet Publisher license server on your network for floating licensing. Note that a license server is not required for node-locked licensing.

Installing and setting up the FlexNet Publisher consists of five simple steps:

Choose a License Server Machine
Collect Information on the License Server Machine
Install the License Server Components
Install the License File and Start the License Manager
Setup End-user Client Machines to Access the License Server

For detailed information on how to use FlexNet Publisher, please refer to the FlexNet Publisher License Administration Guide included in the installation package or on our support website, http://www.scianalog.com/support/.

Choose a License Server Machine

First of all, choose a machine that will act as a license server. A stable machine that does not get frequently rebooted or shut down is desirable. The license server machine does not need to have the same architecture or operating system as the end-user client machines where XMODEL are running. For further information and tips on how to choose the license server machines, please refer to the “Selecting a License Server Machine” and “Ensuring License Availability” sections in the FlexNet Publisher License Administration Guide.

Collect Information on the License Server Machine

The license files issued by Scientific Analog, Inc. are locked to a specific license server machine you choose. On Linux platforms, the FlexNet Publisher uses two information fields to identify a server machine: the hostname and Ethernet MAC address. Hostname is a simple string (e.g. 'mylicserver') that identifies a machine and Ethernet MAC address is six groups of two hexadecimal digits (e.g. 00:1C:42:3C:3F:21) that uniquely identifies each network interface connected to the network.

Basically, you need to supply the hostname and Ethernet MAC address of your license server machine to Scientific Analog, Inc. to get the license file issued.

One way to figure out the hostname and Ethernet MAC address of your chosen license server machine is to use the FlexNet utility called lmhostid, which you can download from the Flexera Software website or install by performing the Step 3 described in the next section. Once you have this lmhostid installed, you can retrieve the hostname and Ethernet MAC address information by executing the following commands on your license server machine:

unix> lmhostid –hostname
lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2013 Flexera Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "HOSTNAME=mylicserver"

unix> lmhostid –ether
lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2013 Flexera Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "001c423c3f21"

Alternatively, you can find out the hostname and Ethernet MAC address of your license server machine using the more basic Linux commands. For instance, the following commands return the hostname of your machine and Ethernet MAC addresses of the network interfaces installed on the machine:

unix> hostname
mylicserver

unix> /sbin/ifconfig –a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1C:42:3C:3F:21
          inet addr:10.111.55.3  Bcast:10.111.55.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:15890 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:15076 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1226510 (1.1 MiB)  TX bytes:44425220 (42.3 MiB)

In the above case, the HWaddr field indicates the Ethernet MAC address of the interface eth0. Note that your machine may give different outputs depending on its configurations and platforms. In case you have multiple network interfaces installed on the server machine, supply the Ethernet address of the network interface through which the license server is connected to the end-user client machines. When it is not certain which one is the right one, let the lmhostid utility decide it for you.

The FlexNet Publisher license server also supports three-server redundant triad for higher stability and availability. If you wish to setup the license server as three-server redundant triad, supply the hostnames and Ethernet MAC addresses of the three license server machines to Scientific Analog, Inc.

Install the License Server Components

The next step is to install the FlexNet license server components. Namely, they are the FlexNet license manager (lmgrd), Scientific Analog licensing daemon (salmd), and FlexNet utilities (lmutil).

You can install these license server components by downloading the Scientific Analog’s FlexNet License Manager Installer from https://www.scianalog.com/support/downloads/license-manager to your license server machine and executing the following commands:

unix> chmod +x install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh
unix> ./install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh

Then the installer will prompt you for the path where you would like to install the license server components and operating system of the license server machine (x86_64 for 64-bit Linux and x86 for 32-bit Linux). For instance:

unix> ./install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh

Welcome to the Scientific Analog License Manager Installer!

*** Choose the installation path (press enter to accept the default):
[/cad/downloads] >>> /cad/scianalog/licmgr

*** Choose the OS architecture for the binary files [x86_64|x86]:
[x86_64] >>> x86_64

You can also install the license server components in a batch mode without the interactive prompts by using the -b option and specifying the installation path and operating system with the -p option and -r option, respectively. For instance:

unix> ./install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh –b –p /cad/scianalog/licmgr –r x86_64

To see the full descriptions on the available options and their default values, give the –h option to the installer command:

unix> ./install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh –h
usage: install_sa_licmgr_R2023.sh [options]

Installs the FlexNet Publisher license server components for
Scientific Analog products, by default to the path:
    /cad/downloads

    -h          print this message and exit
    -b          run in batch mode (non-interactive)
    -r    OS architecture (x86_64 or x86, default: x86_64)
    -l    license file (default: None)
    -p    change the installation path (overriding the default)

Install the License File and Start the License Manager

When the license manager installer successfully completes its operation, it displays messages on how to install the license file and start/stop the license manager. For instance:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
The Scientific Analog License Manager is successfully installed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** You can now start/stop the license server using the following commands:

   To start the license server:
   /cad/scianalog/licmgr/bin/lmgrd -c /cad/scianalog/licmgr/license/xmodel.lic

   To stop the license server:
   /cad/scianalog/licmgr/bin/lmdown -c /cad/scianalog/licmgr/license/xmodel.lic

   Advanced users can include these commands in the proper start-up scripts (e.g. /etc/rc.local) to automatically start/stop the license server at the system boot/shutdown.

*** The end-user machines should set either LM_LICENSE_FILE or SALMD_LICENSE_FILE environment variable to define the license server name and port information. For example:

   For bash-like shells:
   export SALMD_LICENSE_FILE=9524@boazRH5

   For csh-like shells:
   setenv SALMD_LICENSE_FILE 9524@boazRH5

*** Note that a license file could not be installed as it was not specified or found. If you need to request a new license file, please supply the following information to Scientific Analog:

------------------------------------------------------------
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "HOSTNAME=mylicserv"
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "001c423c3f21"
------------------------------------------------------------

When you receive a new license file, copy it to /cad/scianalog/licmgr/license/xmodel.lic and restart the license server.

Thank you for using XMODEL!

The recommended location to store the license file is in the subdirectory named license under the license manager installation directory. In fact, if you supply the license file during the installation process (e.g. by specifying the –l option), the license file will be copied into the path of license/xmodel.lic. The following description will assume that the license file is located there.

Once the license file is installed on the license server machine, you can start the license manager by executing the following command:

unix> $LM_INST_PATH/bin/lmgrd -c $LM_INST_PATH/license/xmodel.lic

where $LM_INST_PATH denotes the installation path of the license manager. If you have installed the license file in other places than $LM_INST_PATH/license/xmodel.lic, you can specify its full path instead after the -c option. It is recommended that the license manager not be started by a superuser (i.e. root). A user account with the proper access privileges to the license server component directories is sufficient to start the license server. The command lmgrd has more available options (e.g. for specifying a debug log file). For more details, please refer to the FlexNet Publisher License Administration Guide.

On the other hand, you can stop by the license manager by executing the following command:

unix> $LM_INST_PATH/bin/lmdown -c $LM_INST_PATH/license/xmodel.lic

An advanced user can setup the license server machine so that the license manager is automatically started at the system boot and stopped at shutdown. For instance, you can insert the start command in the /etc/rc.local file. For more information, please refer to the UNIX administration guides suitable for your operating system.

The FlexNet Publisher comes with a variety of command-line utilities to retrieve the information regarding the license server running. Table 1 lists the available commands. For detailed information on how to use each of these commands, please refer to the FlexNet Publisher License Administration Guide.

Table 1. Command-line utilities for FlexNet Publisher license administration.

Utility Name	Description
`lmborrow`	Supports license borrowing.
`lmdiag`	Diagnoses license checkout problems.
`lmdown`	Gracefully shuts down selected vendor deamons on the license server (or on all three systems in the case of three-server redundancy).
`lmhostid`	Reports the hosted of a system.
`lminstall`	Converts license files between different formats.
`lmnewlog`	Moves existing report log information to a new file name and starts a new report log file with the existing file name.
`lmpath`	Allows users direct control over license file path settings.
`lmremove`	Releases a hung license to the pool of free licenses.
`lmreread`	Causes the license daemon to reread the license file and start any new vendor daemons.
`lmstat`	Displays the status of a license server.
`lmswitch`	Controls debug log location and size.
`lmswitchr`	Switches the report log to a new file name.
`lmver`	Reports the version of a library or binary file.
`lmvminfo`	Returns the environment of the system used as to virtual or not.

Set up End-user Client Machines to Access the License Server

An end-user client machine needs to access the license server machine on the network in order to check out the desired license features. Define the environment variable named SALMD_LICENSE_FILE to specify the location of the server machine and its service TCP port number (by default, 9524).

On a bash-like shell:

unix> export SALMD_LICENSE_FILE=9524@<SERVER>

On a csh-like shell:

unix> setenv SALMD_LICENSE_FILE 9524@<SERVER>

where <SERVER> denotes the hostname of the license server machine. It is convenient to define an entry in the /etc/hosts file in case the mapping from this hostname to the IP address is not defined elsewhere. Also, to avoid having to define the environment variable every time a new shell is created, add the above command to the initialization script such as .bashrc or .cshrc.

In case you have multiple license servers, you can specify all of them using colons (‘:‘) or commas (‘,‘) as delimiters. For instance:

unix> export SALMD_LICENSE_FILE=9524@<SERVER1>:9524@<SERVER2>:9524@<SERVER3>

or,

unix> setenv SALMD_LICENSE_FILE 9524@<SERVER1>,9524@<SERVER2>,9524@<SERVER3>

where <SERVER1>, <SERVER2>, and <SERVER3> are the hostnames of the license server machines.