Node-Locked Licenses Using Hostid

This section describes node-locked licenses using a hostid. Licenses held in trusted storage are node-locked because trusted storage is locked to a machine, see Locking of Licenses Using Hostid or Trusted Storage for an explanation.

Node-locking means the FlexEnabled application can be used on one system or a set of systems only. A node-locked license has a hostid on the FEATURE line that identifies a specific host. There are two types of node-locked licenses: uncounted and counted.

If the number of licenses value is set to either zero (0) or uncounted, then the license will not be counted which allows the license to be used an unlimited number of times. This configuration does not require a license server because it is not necessary to count the concurrent usage of the features.

The license server can be used to serve uncounted licenses. However, served uncounted INCREMENT line signatures are not linked to the hostid on the SERVER line, therefore using served uncounted licenses with HOSTID=ANY is an exploit risk. Instead, Revenera recommends served counted licenses with a large count.

The following license file allows unlimited usage of feature f1 on the systems with hostids of 17007ea8 and 1700ab12:

FEATURE f1 sampled 1.000 31-dec-2020 uncounted HOSTID=17007ea8 SIGN=”<...>”

FEATURE f1 sampled 1.000 31-dec-2020 uncounted HOSTID=1700ab12 SIGN=”<...>”

Alternately, these two FEATURE lines could have been issued by your software publisher with a hostid list:

FEATURE f1 sampled 1.000 31-dec-2020 uncounted HOSTID="17007ea8 1700ab12” SIGN=”<...>”

If these were the only FEATURE lines in this license file, neither the license server manager or vendor daemon are necessary and you do not need to start one.

The following license file provides three licenses for feature f1, locked to the system with hostid 1300ab43. Since the license server and licenses are locked to the same system, the daemons run on the same system that runs the FlexEnabled application.

SERVER lulu 1300ab43 1700

VENDOR sampled /etc/sampled

FEATURE f1 sampled 1.00 31-dec-2020 3 HOSTID=1300ab43 SIGN=”<...>”