How floating (concurrent) licenses work

If all the floating licenses are used in the same local network the installation procedure of floating licenses is the same as for the Named User licenses. Within the same network the license management is done by communication between the instances of <oXygen/> that are connected to the same local network and that run at the same time. Any new instance of <oXygen/> that is started after the number of running instances is equal with the number of purchased licenses will display a warning message and will disable the open file action.

If the floating licenses are used on machines connected to different local networks a separate license server must be started and the licenses deployed on it.

Procedure 2.6. Floating license server setup

  1. Download the license server from one of the download URLs included in the registration email message with your floating license key.

  2. Run the downloaded Windows 32 bit installer or Windows 64 bit installer or unzip the all platforms zip archive kit on your server machine. The Windows installer installs the license server as a Windows service, it provides the option to start the Windows service automatically at Windows startup and it creates shortcuts in the Start menu group for starting and stopping the Windows service manually. If you use the zip archive on Windows you have to run the scripts provided in the archive for installing, starting, stopping and uninstalling the server as a Windows service.

  3. If you start the server with the script licenseServer.bat / licenseServer.sh you can leave the default values for the parameters for the licenses folder and server port or you can set these two parameters to other values. The default folder for the floating license file is [license-server-install-dir]/license and the default TCP/IP server port is 12346.

    To change the default values of the license server the following parameters have to be used:

    • -licenseDir followed by the path of the directory where the license files will be placed;

    • -port followed by the port number used to communicate with <oXygen/> instances.

    Important

    The license folder must contain a text file called license.txt which must contain a single floating license key corresponding to the set of purchased floating licenses. If you have more than one floating license key for the same <oXygen/> version obtained from different purchases please contact us at support@oxygenxml.com to merge your license keys into a single one.

After the floating license server is set up the <oXygen/> application can be started and configured to request a license from it:

Procedure 2.7. Request a floating license from the license server

  1. Start Eclipse.

  2. Go to Window -> Preferences -> oXygen -> Register... . The license dialog is displayed.

  3. Check the Use a license server checkbox.

  4. Fill-in the Host text field with the host name or IP address of the license server.

  5. Fill-in the Port text field with the port number used for communicating with the license server. Default is 12346.

  6. Click the OK button. If the maximum number of available licenses was not exceeded a license key is received from the floating license server and registered in <oXygen/> . The license details are displayed in the About dialog opened from menu Help. If the maximum number of licenses was exceeded a warning dialog will pop up letting the user know about the problem. The message contains information about the users who requested and successfully received the floating licenses before exceeding the maximum number of licenses.

How to install the <oXygen/> license server as a Windows service

In order to install the <oXygen/> license server as a Windows service you should run the Windows installer downloaded from the URL provided in the registration email message containing your floating license key.

If you want to install, start and uninstall yourself the server as a Windows service you can run the scripts created in the install folder from a command line console with the install folder of the license server as the current folder (on Windows Vista you have to run the console as Administrator). For installing the Windows service:

installWindowsService.bat

After installing the server as a Windows service, use the following two commands to start and stop the license server:

startWindowsService.bat
stopWindowsService.bat

Uninstalling the Windows service requires the following command:

uninstallWindowsService.bat

The installWindowsService.bat script installs the <oXygen/> license server as a Windows service with the name "oXygenLicenseServer" and accepts two parameters: the path of the folder containing the floating license key files and the local port number on which the server accepts connections from instances of the <oXygen/> XML Editor . The parameters are optional. The default values are:

license

for the license file folder

12555

for the local port number

The JAVA_HOME variable must point to the home folder of a Java runtime environment installed on your Windows system.

The startService.bat script starts the Windows service so that the license server can accept connections from <oXygen/> clients.

The stopService.bat script stops the Windows service. The license server is shut down and it cannot accept connections from <oXygen/> clients.

The uninstallService.bat script uninstalls the Windows service created by the installService.bat script.

When the license server is used as a Windows service the output messages and the error messages cannot be viewed as for a command line script so that they are redirected automatically to the following log files created in the directory where the license server is installed:

outLicenseServer.log

the standard output stream of the server

errLicenseServer.log

the standard error stream of the server

On Windows Vista if you want to start or stop the Windows service with the Start menu shortcut called Start Windows service / Stop Windows service you have to run the shortcut as Administrator. This is a standard option for running Start menu shortcuts on Windows Vista and is necessary for giving the required permission to the command that starts / stops the Windows service.