Software Licsensing for Digital Unix.

Software Licensing for Digital Unix

Digital Unix and add-on software enforce licensing agreements through the use of the "LMF" or License Management Facility. The type of operating system license required depends on whether the system is a workstation/client or server, and the number of CPUs in the system. Licensed software requires the use of license strings in order to run. These license strings are called "PAK"s, or Product Authorization Keys. These PAKs are usually supplied in hard copy on fancy certificate type paper. PAKs are "registered" to the system using the "lmf" command.

If the base operating system is not licensed, you will be able to sign on to the system console, but will not be able to access the system over the network.

LMF Commands:

For detailed information about lmf commands, see the man page. But as a quick overview, here are some of the important lmf sub-commands.

lmf list - Lists all licenses registered on a system. When issued with the "-full" option, it lists most of the information you need to create a PAK file, except for the very important checksum field.
lmf register - Adds a software license to a system. This command will "enable" a license, but the license is not "active" and loaded into the kernel cache until the system is rebooted, or an "lmf load" command is issued.
lmf load - loads a license into the kernel cache and makes it "active" and available for use.
lmf issue - This command is generally used to transfer a license from one system to another. When you run this command the system recreates the PAK file for the specified software package and writes it to standard out. A side affect of the command is that the software package is un-registered from the system the command was run on.

Common License tasks:

Adding a new license

First, you need the information for the PAK. Licenses from Digital often come in the form of a paper certificate. Licenses may also come in electronic form as a text file.

If the license comes in electronic form you can use the command:
"lmf register - < mylicensefile.txt"

If the license comes in paper form, you can use the command

"lmf register"
This invokes an an editor and brings up a template for a PAK. Simply type in the information contained on the paper document.

Once the license has been registered, use the "load" command to make it active, ex:
"lmf load 0 OSF-BASE"

Transfering a license to another system Use the lmf issue command to create a PAK file and unregister the license on the first system, then transfer the file the destination system and register the license. For example:

"lmf issue OSF-BASE > osfbase.PAK"
copy osfbase.PAK to the destination system
"lmf register - < osfbase.PAK"
"lmf load 0 OSF-BASE"

Making a backup copy of a license PAK This procedure can be used to make backup copies of license files, which can be used for disaster recovery purposes, or for re-installing a system for other reasons. (ex, OS upgrade).

The procedure is the same as when you transfer a license to another system, only instead of executing the "register" and "load" commands on a second system, you use them to re-register the license on the original system.

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