LICENSE.DAT(5) — PUBLIC FILES, TABLES, AND TROFF MACROS

NAME

license.dat − license configuration file for FLEXlm licensed applications

SYNOPSIS

/var/flexlm/licenses/license.dat

DESCRIPTION

The license.dat file contains the information used by the FLEXlm network licensing package to determine what licenses are available at a particular site. The license.dat file contains the following information:

list of server nodes
list of vendor daemons
list of features enabled for this site
list of featureset lines for this site

Some of the information in the license file is changeable by the system administrator at the end-user site, allowing him to configure the licensed software to fit into his environment.

FLEXlm programs and routines find the license file by an algorithm described below in the section "FINDING THE LICENSE FILE."

Each line in the license.dat file starts with a keyword which identifies the information on that line. The keyword is one of SERVER, DAEMON, FEATURE, or FEATURESET.

The SERVER line is of the form

SERVER nodename hostid [port-number]

The hostids from all of the server lines are encrypted into the FEATURE lines, so they can not be changed by the site administrator. The optional port-number field can be changed at any time. This allows the site administrator to select a port number which does not conflict with the other services, software packages, or FLEXlm vendors on his system. The site administrator can also change the nodename if he wishes, as long as the hostid does not change.

The DAEMON line is of the form

DAEMON daemon-name path options-file

The site administrator can change the path field, which allows him to place the vendor daemon in any convenient location. The site administrator can also change the location of the options-file, which describes various options that the site administrator can modify (see license.options(5)).

The FEATURE line describes the features that are enabled for this site. None of the information in the FEATURE line is changeable by the site administrator.

The FEATURESET line is a vendor-optional line; some vendors may choose to use this line, some may choose not to use it. The FEATURESET line encodes the encryption codes of all of the features for the specified vendor. This line is not changeable by the site administrator.

FINDING THE LICENSE FILE

Most programs which read the license.dat file accept a command line option (typically -c) which can be used to specify the location of the license file if other than /var/flexlm/licenses/license.dat. If no command line switch is given, then the value of the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE will be used to find the license file. If neither of these are specified, the default location, /var/flexlm/licenses/license.dat, will be used.

The LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable can be used to specify a number of different license files. To do this, the environment variable should be set to a single string which contains all of the license file paths separated by colons. For example:
LM_LICENSE_FILE=/var/foo.dat:/u2/flexlm/bar.dat:/u12/lic.dat

EXAMPLE

Here is an example of a license.dat file.

SERVER MPC 17003456 1700
DAEMON Motod /var/flexlm/bin
FEATURE great_program gsi 1.000 01-jan-1994 10 1EF890030EABF324 ""
FEATURE greater_program gsi 1.000 01-jan-0 10 0784561FE98BA073 ""

This example illustrates the license file for a single vendor with two features, one with an expiration date of 1/1/94 and the other with an unlimited expiration date.

FILES