Installing the VE License Server Software

Charon emulators that are to use Virtual Environments (VE) licenses require at least one VE license server on the Charon host system itself or an a separate license server. It is recommended to run the VE license server on a dedicated system to avoid license invalidation caused by changes to the system which are more likely to occur on a system used for other purposes as well, for example, to run a Charon emulator. It is also recommended to install a backup license server to ensure continued operation in case of a failure or invalidation of the primary license.

Please note:

• This section provides a basic description on how to install the VE license server kit. Please consult the VE License Server user's guide in the Licensing Documentation section of the Stromasys documentation site for a detailed description of the prerequisites for running the VE license server and the configuration options available.
• If an instance was installed from a prepackaged Charon emulator marketplace image, the installation package is already stored in /charon/storage. Please check, if there are newer versions available that would be preferable for your environment.
• For conventional installations, Stromasys will provide you with a download location.

In the description below, the placeholders used have the following meaning:

• <mykey> is the private key of the key-pair you associated with your cloud instance
  (for an on-premises VMware installation or an installation on a physical system where logging in with username/password is allowed, this is not needed).
• <user> is the user associated with your license server instance (e.g., opc on OCI, centos for a CentOS instance on AWS, or the custom user on your VMware virtual machine;
  for an instance installed from a Stromasys-provided Charon AL or VE emulator marketplace image, use user charon for SFTP and user sshuser for interactive login.
• <linux-ip> is the ip address of your license server system.
  

Perform the following steps to install the VE License Server software:

1. Copy the license server software package to the license server host (if needed):
   
   1. For example, use sftp to connect to the VE license server system.
      # sftp -i ~/.ssh/<mykey>  <user>@<linux-ip>
   2. Copy the software package to the license server system using the following SFTP command:
      > put <local-path-to-license-server-package>


2. Use ssh to log in on the license server host.
   # ssh-i ~/.ssh/<mykey> <user>@<linux-ip>
   
   
3. As a privileged user (root) go to the directory where you stored the installation package and install the package:
   1. Become the root user: # sudo -i
   2. Go to the package location:  # cd <path-to-package-directory>
If you used SFTP to copy the package to an instance installed from a prepackaged Charon marketplace image, the home directory of the charon user and the default location for file transfers is /charon/storage.
   3. For VE license server 2.2.4 and above, unpack the archive and agree to the end-user license agreement:
      
      1. # sh ./license-server-<version>.rpm.sh
         This will display the EULA. After agreeing to it, for version 2.2.4, the RPM installation package will be unpacked in the current directory. For version 2.2.5 and later, the EULA and the RPM package will be unpacked in a subdirectory (license-server-<version>.rpm) of the current working directory.
   4. Install the package: 
      1. Go to the directory in which the RPM package is located.           
      2. Linux 7.x: # yum install license-server*.rpm
      3. Linux 8.x and 9.x: # dnf install license-server*.rpm

Below, you find the sample output of an installation (version 8.x of the supported Linux distributions; assuming that the RPM is in the current working directory):

# dnf install license-server-2.0.1.rpm
Last metadata expiration check: 0:19:36 ago on Di 03 Mai 2022 13:20:02 CEST.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package               Architecture  Version          Repository           Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 license-server        x86_64        2.0.1-1          @commandline         53 M
 
Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package
 
Total size: 53 M
Installed size: 85 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1
  Running scriptlet: license-server-2.0.1-1.x86_64                          1/1
  Installing       : license-server-2.0.1-1.x86_64                          1/1
  Running scriptlet: license-server-2.0.1-1.x86_64                          1/1
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/licensed.service → /etc/systemd/system/licensed.service.
 
  Verifying        : license-server-2.0.1-1.x86_64                          1/1
 
Installed:
  license-server-2.0.1-1.x86_64                                                
 
Complete!