| Introduction | Frequently Asked Questions | |
This chapter explains the tasks for setting up and running the License Management Facility.
There is little to do to administer the License Management Facility, since the facility runs automatically without manual intervention. However, there is some setting up and some occasional monitoring to do.
When deciding how many licenses to order of each type, consider that:
For full information on licensing, see your MERANT End User Product License agreement and associated license information shipped with MERANT software.
You must install the License Management Facility on every system that runs licensed products. You need only one License Management Facility on each system, regardless of the number of the licensed products.
You can either install the License Management Facility independently or as part of installing a licensed product. If you do not install the Licence Management Facility as part of the product, you can install it later by going to the lmf subdirectory of the directory where the product was installed, and entering:
sh lmfinstall
See the booklet that came with your CD for information on installing the License Management Facility.
Note: Once you have installed the License Database, you cannot move it to a different directory except by reinstalling the License Management Facility. If you want to move the installed License Database, you need to run the License Management Facility installation script, specifying a different path for the installation, and then enter the license keys again.
The installation process gives you the option of automatically starting up the License Manager every time the system is booted. If you did not choose the automatic startup, you need to start the License Manager manually every time you boot the system.
To start the License Manager manually:
sh mflmman [FORCE|WAIT] [TRACE]
FORCE, WAIT and TRACE are
optional:
FORCE |
The License Manager does not by default start up if
there are still licensed tasks running that were started from a previous
run of the License Manager.
In this situation, you can use the FORCE directive to force License Manager to first terminate the previously started licensed tasks, and then to start. |
WAIT |
This directive suspends the License Manager until any
outstanding licensed tasks from a previous License Manager run have
finished.
Use this directive when you do not want existing licensed tasks to be terminated prematurely, and want to wait for them to complete naturally. |
TRACE |
With this directive, the License Manager maintains a
log of the License Manager activity in the file, MF-LMF.log.
This directive records additional information in the log file. This file is mainly for MERANT to use to help you solve any problems you might have with the License Management Facility. Use this directive if unusual behavior has occurred. Do not use it
by default, as the log file can become very large. |
If you decide later, after the installation process, that you want to start License Manager automatically at boot time, you can set this up as follows:
For other systems, copy the script into the /etc directory.
For other systems, add the following entry to your /etc/inittab file:
mF:2345:wait:sh /etc/mflmrcscript>/dev/null 2>&1
Refer to your operating system documentation for more details.
Before users can use licensed products, you need to install the license keys for those products. Each license key unlocks a licensed product, enabling the product to be used.
Installing a license key is a separate procedure from installing the licensed product. This enables you to add more license keys at any time, without reinstalling the licensed product.
You can install a license key from the command line or by using the menu interface of the License Administration Services. To get started quickly, install them from the command line, as follows:
sh mflmcmd
The license is then added to the license database.
64-bit Server Express:
If you are installing 64-bit licenses to enable you to use an application
with 64-bit Server Express, any 32-bit licenses installed for a previous
version of 32-bit Server Express are disabled. A warning message is
displayed informing you that 32-bit licenses will be disabled.
If you are using the 64-bit working mode, you can install and uninstall 32-bit licenses at any time, although these will have no effect on 64-bit Server Express.
The License Administration Services provides a menu-driven interface for managing MERANT product license keys, including installing and uninstalling license keys, and reviewing the licenses installed.
Before using the menu interface, your terminal must be set up to support the necessary screen handling and the associated function keys. You need to configure your environment so that:
We recommend that you read the on-disk document terminfo.txt (located in the mflmf directory) before proceeding.
To start the License Administration Services:
sh mflmadm
To get help using the License Administration Services, press F1=Help, which displays information about the current menu.
Tip If the function keys, such as F2 and F3 are not available on your UNIX terminal, you can press / followed by the number of the function key. For example, press /2 for F2. See the appendix UNIX Key Usage Chart for a complete list of keys.
Before users can use licensed products, you need to install the license keys for those products. Each license key unlocks a licensed product, enabling the product to be used.
Installing a license key is a separate procedure from installing the licensed product. This enables you to add more license keys at any time, without reinstalling the licensed product.
To install a license key using the menu interface of the License Administration Services:
64-bit Server Express:
If you are installing 64-bit licenses to enable you to use 64-bit Server
Express, and there are already installed 32-bit licenses associated with a
32-bit version of Server Express, the 32-bit licenses are disabled. A
warning message is displayed informing you of this.
If you are using the 64-bit working mode, you can install and uninstall 32-bit licenses at any time, although these will have no effect on 64-bit Server Express.
From time to time, you need to check what licenses are installed. You might then need to order more licenses or change the distribution of existing licenses among users and machines.
To review the licenses in use, from the Main menu of the License Administration Services, press F5=Browse. You can look through the licenses already loaded by pressing F2=Previous and F3=Next. Press F5=End-browse to return to the Main menu.
If you require more licenses, because for example, more users want to use one of the licensed products, contact your Sales Representative to order them.
If you need to move an existing license from one machine to another, uninstall the license key first from one machine and then install it on the other machine. For instructions on how to do this, see the sections Uninstalling a License Key and Installing License Keys Initially in this chapter.
To uninstall a license key, from the Main menu of the License Administration Services, press F2=key, and enter the serial number and license number printed on the License Key Folder. Then press enter and press F4=uninstall.
64-bit Server Express:
If you uninstall all 64-bit licenses, any previously installed 32-bit
licenses are reenabled; this only occurs if the 64-bit version is
installed in the same directory as the 32-version (that is, the value of
$COBDIR remains the same).
The License Manager runs continuously and does not require any manual intervention. It communicates through the console, reporting status and activity such as that the License Manager process has started. The License Manager process, mflm_manager, is a free-standing separate process, running as a daemon.
To confirm that the License Manager is running:
./lmfgetpv
If the License Manager is running, lmfgetpv tells you the version number of the running License Manager and the path from where it was loaded. Otherwise, you are told that the License Manager is not running.
The license database is automatically backed up. In the unlikely event of a problem, the License Administration Services detects the problem at startup and gives you the option of restoring from backup. The license database files are mflmfdb, mflmfdb.idx, mflmfdbX, and mflmfdbX.idx.
If you encounter a serious problem, contact Product Support for help in resolving it. (See the on-disk document readme for more details.) They might ask you to:
To stop the License Manager running:
./lmfgetpv k
If users run a sequence of development tasks from a script (for example, to compile a suite of programs), it is possible that insufficient licenses will be available at the instant that the script attempts to launch one of the development tasks.
This could occur if:
In either case, while some of the development tasks in a script will be successful, others will fail as no license will be available.
The user's script can monitor the success or otherwise of each task by testing the return value of the task via the shell $? return status. Zero indicates success, non-zero failure.
If developers are running such scripts, and meeting this problem, you should advise them to set the environment variable LMFWAIT for the task. LMFWAIT is used to set a value that specifies the number of times a task should attempt to get a license unit. By default, the task sleeps for 10 seconds between each attempt. In effect, the task suspends itself until a license unit becomes free.
The format of LMFWAIT is:
LMFWAIT=retries[,wait]
where the parameters are:
retries |
The number of times the task should attempt to obtain a license |
wait |
The time that should be waited, in seconds, between each attempt to obtain a license. The default is 10. |
For example, to allow 100 attempts to use a license, LMFWAIT should be set as follows:
LMFWAIT=100 export LMFWAIT
To allow 25 attempts to use a license, with a 1 minute wait between each attempt:
LMFWAIT=25,60 export LMFWAIT
License Manager uses named pipes which are created in the location
defined by the system setting of P_tmpdir. This is typically
/tmp.
Most named pipes created by License Manager exist only for a short time. There is one named pipe, however, which is created when License Manager is launched, and exists until it is closed down. The name of this pipe is LMF-common.
You might want to relocate LMF-common to a different directory, so that you can delete all entries in the temporary directory, without having to explicitly exclude this pipe. To do this you must include in the job that starts License Manager the environment variable LMFCOMM. This environment variable must be set before your job executes the command to start Licence Manager. The format of LMFCOMM is:
LMFCOMM=directory
where directory is the full pathname of the
directory that is to be used by License Manager to place its named pipe
LMF-common. For example:
LMFCOMM=/usr/templmf export LMFCOMM
The directory specified by LMFCOMM must have full read/write/execute permission for all users who will be using the licensed development system. In addition, all development system users must also set LMFCOMM in their own environment to the same value as that used by License Manager. If this is not done, then users will be unable to contact License Manager and obtain a license unit.
Note: The setting of LMFCOMM is independent of the setting of LMFTEMP. LMFTEMP is described in the next section.
You can also relocate the short-lived named pipes; however, there is usually no good reason for doing this, since any named pipes that are not destroyed by License Manager - perhaps because of a system failure of some kind - are anyway automatically deleted during the normal purge of the system temporary directory that occurs on most systems.
If you do want to relocate the transient names pipes you must set the enviroment variable LMFTEMP; the format is:
LMFTEMP=directory
where directory is the full pathname of the
directory that is to be used by License Manager to place its transient
named pipes. This environment variable must be set before your job
executes the command to start Licence Manager. For example:
LMFTEMP=/usr/templmf export LMFTEMP
The directory specified by LMFTEMP must have full read/write/execute permission for all users who will be using the licensed development system. In addition, all development system users must also set LMFTEMP in their own environment to the same value as that used by License Manager. If this is not done, then users will be unable to contact License Manager and obtain a license unit.
Note: The setting of LMFTEMP is independent of the setting of LMFCOMM. LMFCOMM is described in the previous section.
During the testing phase of development, when it is necessary to run or debug your application, an Application Server license is needed before the application will run. This applies whether running or debugging from the command line, or from within the Development Environment.
For each LMF development license unit installed, there are five implied Application Server license units. When the development licenses are installed, these associated Application Server licenses are also automatically installed; the License Administrator needs take no special action for this to occur.
If more than five Application Server License units are required per developer, then additional Application Server licenses can be purchased from MERANT or the product supplier.
If you test an application and get a message telling you that there are no AS licenses available, this might be because the AS database does not contain the five complimentary AS license units.
To check that these AS licenses exist:
$COBDIR/aslmf/apptrack
AppTrack displays a menu.
AppTrack displays a report showing the number of licenses installed, and the number of copies of an application running at that moment.
There should be an entry marked ***Developer Usage for
the installed Development Product.
If you cannot find this entry:
The missing developer license units are installed onto the Application Server database.
The application can now be run.
Copyright © 2000 MERANT International Limited. All rights reserved.
This document and the proprietary marks and names
used herein are protected by international law.
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