Installing AVS/Express

A Detailed Licensing Information

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License Server as a Windows Service

There are a number of available solutions for turning the Java-based license server into a Windows Service that can be started and stopped using the Management Console. The license server is not a particulary demanding application and it requires no special procedures for starting it and stopping it.

Thus a number of off-the-shelf solutions will work. The following procedure is based on the freely available Java Service Wrapper from Tanuki Software.

The home page of the Java Service Wrapper project is http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.org. Downloads can be found on the following page on SourceForge.net: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=39428. Download the Win32 version and unzip it. Copy the following four files to the same directory where you are keeping LmServer.jar and your license file.

WRAPPER_DIR/bin/Wrapper.exe                          WRAPPER_DIR/lib/wrapper.dll                         
WRAPPER_DIR/lib/wrapper.jar                       WRAPPER_DIR/src/conf/wrapper.conf
 

You now need to edit the wrapper.conf file. The following shows only the lines that are changed. It is not actually a requirement that all the files be placed in the same directory, but you will need to change some of the file paths shown below to match the directories you use.

wrapper.java.classpath.1=wrapper.jar wrapper.java.classpath.2=LmServer.jar           
wrapper.java.library.path.1=. wrapper.app.parameter.1=com.avs.LmServer 
wrapper.app.parameter.2=license.dat               wrapper.logfile=wrapper.log                              
wrapper.console.title=AVS License Manager               wrapper.ntservice.name=AVSLM                      
wrapper.ntservice.displayname=AVS License Manager                       
wrapper.ntservice.description=AVS License Manager for AVS/Express
 

Once you have edited the wrapper.conf file, you are ready to install and start the service. This assumes that the main "java" executable is in your PATH and you are able to start the license server by hand as shown in the previous section

Install the Service:

Wrapper -i wrapper.conf
 

Run the Service: (or use the Management Console)

Wrapper -c wrapper.conf
 

Uninstall the Service:

Wrapper -r wrapper.conf
 

Format of the license file

Earlier formats

Generation 1 licenses

The first generation of the non-FLEXlm licensing system was introduced in AVS/Express 5.1 for Linux and was used though AVS/Express 6.0 for Linux. These licenses were nothing but a 11 character password string. It contained no date information and no "plain text" information at all. Support for this 76style of license have been removed from AVS/Express.

Generation 2 licenses

Starting with AVS/Express 6.1 and continuing through AVS/Express 6.3, the license format was expanded slightly to allow for an expiration date. The new format had a date and then the 11 character password string. Multiple licenses were allowed in one file and blank lines and comment lines starting with '#' were skipped. The following shows an example.

# Example license file.

20-jun-2004 ABCDEFGHIJK
 

AVS/Express 7.0 format

AVS/Express 7.0 introduces a new license file format that has considerably more complex than the old system. These are sometimes called Generation 3 licenses, although that term is only used to help distinguish them from the older style of licenses discussed above. The G3 licenses support many more licensing options and features than the previous generation licenses and have the further advantage that all the information is in plain-text.

Here is an example license (all on one line).

AVS LICVER=1 PRODUCT=EXPRESS DATE=30-nov-2004 HOSTID=192.138.235.67 CUSTID=AVSInc 
PASSWD=6fed4ffc5eb83daf1544bcc905f9a293
 

The license has multiple fields, which are separated by whitespace (either tabs or spaces). With the exception of the leading "AVS", all the fields are of the form of keyword=value pairs. The license can be split into several lines by using a backslash as a continuation character. The following is the exact same license as shown above.

AVS LICVER=1 PRODUCT=EXPRESS DATE=30-nov-2004 \ HOSTID=192.138.253.162 
CUSTID=AVSInc \ PASSWD=6fed4ffc5eb83daf1544bcc905f9a293
 

The following gives details on what each field means.

LICVER: License Version. Currently fixed at 1.

PROD: Product Name.

EXPRESS for Developers Edition.
EXPRESS_VIZ, for Visualization Edition.
EXPRESS_RT, for a Runtime.
LICSERV, for the license server.

DATE: Expiration date.

No date or a date with year 0000 or 1900 means never expire.

HOSTID: Host Identification.

This is the most complex field. There are several different ways of specifying the host id.

1] Internet Address - should be 4 decimal numbers each in the range 0-255, separated by dots. Example 128.10.22.32. Do not use 127.0.0.1 as that is the special loopback address.

2] Internet Network Address - Similar to a Internet Address, but it has an extra parameter that allows distinguishing between the network address and the specific host address. The syntax is a forward slash then a number that give the number of bits in the network. For example, the address 128.10.22.00/24 specifies that the first 24 bits of the address (128.10.22) are for the network. The license is valid for any host on the network.

3]Internet Hostname or Domainname - Use the familiar dot notation to specify a hostname (e.g. foo.avs.com). Specify an entire domain (e.g. avs.com) by leaving off the hostname. The license is valid for evey host in the domain

4]Ethernet or MAC Address - should be 6 hex numbers, each 2 digits long, separated by colons. Example 00:12:34:45:78:9A. MAC stands for Media Access Control, it is a generalization of the idea of an ethernet address. Currently, Ethernet/MAC address are supported on Windows, Linux and Darwin only. On Windows, NetBIOS must be installed and enabled on the machine to reliably get the MAC address.

5] Windows Volume Serial Number - The Volume Serial Number of the C drive. Supported on Windows only. Should be 4 hex characters, a dash and 4 more hex characters. Example C123-B456

6] Unix hostid - Output of the Unix 'hostid' command. Should be eight hex characters. 0 means any host. 0 can also be used on Windows.

CUSTID: Customer Site Id.

Any string 31 characters or less in length that uniquely identifies the customer. Quotes can be used to put spaces in the Customer Id.

PASSWD: Checksum/Password

License checksum that consists of 32 hex digits.

LIMIT: This specifies the number of copies that are allowed be run at once. When a limit is specified, then using a license server is required.

PORT: TCP port.

Used only for license server licenses. It specifies the TCP port that is used to communicate between the license server and AVS/Express. AVS/Express must use a matching port as controlled by the XP_LICENSE_SERVER environment variable. If omitted, it defaults to 33333.

FEATURES: Extra features (not shown above in example)

This is optional and can be omitted. Each product has a default set of abilities or "features". The feature flags enables fine-tuning of the allowed features for each license if necessary. For example, a standard feature of Developers Edition is that it can be used to generate runtimes. A feature flag could be use to disable this ability in Developers Edition or enable it in Visualization Edition.