OpenVMS License Management Utility Manual

Updated: 07 June 2001

Order Number: AA--PVXUD--TK

November 1996

This manual describes the use of the License Management Facility (LMF), the software license management tool for the OpenVMS operating system.

Revision/Update Information: This is a revised manual. This manual supersedes OpenVMS License Management Utility Manual, OpenVMS AXP Version 6.2 and OpenVMS VAX Version 6.2.

Software Version: OpenVMS Alpha Version 7.1 OpenVMS VAX Version 7.1

Digital Equipment Corporation Maynard, Massachusetts

November 1996

Digital Equipment Corporation makes no representations that the use of its products in the manner described in this publication will not infringe on existing or future patent rights, nor do the descriptions contained in this publication imply the granting of licenses to make, use, or sell equipment or software in accordance with the description.

Possession, use, or copying of the software described in this publication is authorized only pursuant to a valid written license from Digital or an authorized sublicensor.

Digital conducts its business in a manner that conserves the environment and protects the safety and health of its employees, customers, and the community.

The following are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation: Alpha, AXP, Bookreader, DEC BASIC, DECdirect, DECnet, DECset, DECwindows, DECwrite, Digital, Digital Fortran, MicroVAX, OpenVMS, OpenVMS Cluster, VAX, VAX 9000, VAXcluster, VMS, VMScluster, VAXstation, and the DIGITAL logo.

The following are third-party trademarks:

Display POSTSCRIPT and POSTSCRIPT are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

ZK4584

The OpenVMS documentation set is available on CD-ROM.

Contents Index

Preface

The License Management Facility (LMF) is the software license management tool for the OpenVMS operating system. To run any software product on OpenVMS systems, its license must be registered and loaded. To perform these tasks, use LMF.

Intended Audience

This manual is for managers of licenses for software products that run on the OpenVMS operating system. Typically, the system manager has this responsibility.

Document Structure

This manual consists of the following parts:

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the licensing of OpenVMS layered products and to the OpenVMS LMF.
Chapter 2 describes each task required to manage software product licenses. This chapter also discusses the License Management utility (LICENSE) commands and shows how to use them.
Appendix A describes the syntax of the LICENSE commands.
Appendix B provides examples.
The Glossary defines the LMF-related terms used in this manual.

Reader's Comments

Digital welcomes your comments on this manual.

Print or edit the online form SYS$HELP:OPENVMSDOC_COMMENTS.TXT and send us your comments by:

Internet openvmsdoc@zko.mts.dec.com

Fax 603 881-0120, Attention: OSSG Documentation, ZKO3-4/U08

Mail OSSG Documentation Group, ZKO3-4/U08
110 Spit Brook Rd.
Nashua, NH 03062-2698

How To Order Additional Documentation

Use the following table to order additional documentation or information. If you need help deciding which documentation best meets your needs, call 800-DIGITAL (800-344-4825).

Conventions

The name of the OpenVMS AXP operating system has been changed to OpenVMS Alpha. Any references to OpenVMS AXP or AXP are synonymous with OpenVMS Alpha or Alpha.

VMScluster systems are now referred to as OpenVMS Cluster systems. Unless otherwise specified, references to OpenVMS Clusters or clusters in this document are synonymous with VMSclusters.

Note

Even though the command procedures and displays in this manual use VMS terminology, they pertain to OpenVMS.

The following conventions are used in this manual:

Ctrl/ x A sequence such as Ctrl/ x indicates that you must hold down the key labeled Ctrl while you press another key or a pointing device button.

PF1 x or
GOLD x A sequence such as PF1 x or GOLD x indicates that you must first press and release the key labeled PF1 or GOLD and then press and release another key or a pointing device button.
GOLD key sequences can also have a slash (/), dash (--), or underscore (_) as a delimiter in EVE commands.

[Return] In examples, a key name enclosed in a box indicates that you press a key on the keyboard. (In text, a key name is not enclosed in a box.)

... Horizontal ellipsis points in examples indicate one of the following possibilities:

Additional optional arguments in a statement have been omitted.
The preceding item or items can be repeated one or more times.
Additional parameters, values, or other information can be entered.

.
.
. Vertical ellipsis points indicate the omission of items from a code example or command format; the items are omitted because they are not important to the topic being discussed.

( ) In command format descriptions, parentheses indicate that, if you choose more than one option, you must enclose the choices in parentheses.

[ ] In command format descriptions, brackets indicate optional elements. You can choose one, none, or all of the options. (Brackets are not optional, however, in the syntax of a directory name in an OpenVMS file specification or in the syntax of a substring specification in an assignment statement.)

{ } In command format descriptions, braces indicate a required choice of options; you must choose one of the options listed.

text style This text style represents the introduction of a new term or the name of an argument, an attribute, or a reason.
This style is also used to show user input in Bookreader versions of the manual.

italic text Italic text indicates important information, complete titles of manuals, or variables. Variables include information that varies in system messages (Internal error number), in command lines (/PRODUCER= name), and in command parameters in text (where device-name contains up to five alphanumeric characters).

UPPERCASE TEXT Uppercase text indicates a command, the name of a routine, the name of a file, or the abbreviation for a system privilege.

- A hyphen in code examples indicates that additional arguments to the request are provided on the line that follows.

numbers All numbers in text are assumed to be decimal unless otherwise noted. Nondecimal radixes---binary, octal, or hexadecimal---are explicitly indicated.

Chapter 1
Overview

This overview introduces the OpenVMS License Management Facility (LMF) and outlines the tasks required to manage software licenses for software products.

A product license protects the intellectual property of the software vendor and provides customers with access to the product. Product authorization is usually defined in a contract with specific terms and conditions agreed upon by the software license issuer and the software user.

Digital Equipment Corporation and other software vendors provide software to their customers under an agreement called a license. In this document the term license means the authorization you have to run a software product on the OpenVMS operating system.

License Management Facility and License Agreements

The terms and conditions of your license agreement determine your legal use of software.

LMF is a management tool that can help you comply with your license agreement, but use of LMF does not indemnify you against noncompliance with the terms and conditions of your software license agreements. In other words, LMF offers options for many kinds of license agreements, but using some of these options may not be authorized by your specific license agreement. You must read your license carefully to determine which LMF options you can use legally.

This document describes some features of LMF that Digital Equipment Corporation does not currently authorize. Digital may in the future authorize the use of some features described herein but makes no commitment beyond the current Software Business Practices.

1.1 License Management

To use a software product that requires a license, you must typically perform the following steps:

Obtain a Product Authorization Key (PAK), which provides information required to register the license.
Use LMF to register the license in the License Database.
Use LMF to load the license.
Install the product specified by the PAK.

LMF provides additional features to modify licenses to satisfy specific requirements of individual sites.

To manage software product licenses for OpenVMS layered software, you need to understand the following information about licenses and the tool to manage them on OpenVMS systems:

License Management utility (LICENSE) ( Section 1.2)
License Database ( Section 1.3)
License Unit Requirement Tables (LURTs) ( Section 1.4)
VMSLICENSE.COM command procedure ( Section 1.5)
Types of licenses ( Section 1.6)
Combining licenses ( Section 1.7)

1.2 License Management Utility (LICENSE)

The License Management utility (LICENSE) is the command line interface of LMF. LICENSE provides the commands used to manage interactively the licenses of OpenVMS layered software products made by Digital and, in many cases, by third-party vendors.

LICENSE is a system-level tool that you use at the DCL prompt.

Example:
This example shows a LICENSE MODIFY command line at the DCL prompt. The command modifies the Encryption for OpenVMS license in the License Database so that users can encrypt files from the node DRAMA.

$ LICENSE MODIFY /ADD /INCLUDE=(DRAMA) - _$ /COMMENT="Modified to add node DRAMA 10/23/96" - _$ ENCRYPTION

For detailed information about using LICENSE commands, see Chapter 2.

1.2.1 Displaying LICENSE Information

Use the LICENSE LIST command and the DCL command SHOW LICENSE to track and monitor your system's license information. For information about these commands, see Section 2.4.6.

1.3 License Database

The License Database is a collection of information stored on a disk that contains information about each license on your system. The default database file is SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE]LMF$LICENSE.LDB, which is created by LMF when you install the OpenVMS software.

The terms of each license are stored in a collection of data fields in the database. Data is entered by:

You, issuing LICENSE commands
You, running VMSLICENSE.COM
LMF, keeping records

The collection of data fields representing a license at any one time is called a record. When you first register a license, you create the first record with data specified in your PAK. If you later modify the license, LMF creates a new record to define the modified terms of the license, and includes a notation that the license was modified.

1.3.1 History Records

LMF keeps track of the licensing activity on your system by writing a history record to the License Database every time you modify a PAK. Each history record contains an exact copy of the following:

License record before modification
LICENSE command you used to modify the record
Date and time that you made the changes

For information about viewing and purging these records, see Section 2.2.2.

1.4 License Units and License Unit Requirement Tables

A license unit is a measurement of the authorization granted for use of a product. License units define the size of each license. Each license has a size, specified in license units. Each processor has a series of license unit requirements, also specified in license units.

The license unit requirements of a processor are expressed in a rating. LMF contains ratings (in license units) for all available and appropriate processors in a table called the License Unit Requirement Table (LURT). There is a LURT for each category of software products as identified on the PAK. The PAK contains two fields, the Activity Table Code, and the Availability Table Code, which contain information to identify the category of the software product. Typically, processors that provide more performance have greater license unit requirements, but ratings may be unrelated to performance.

The size of a software product license must be large enough to support the number of users or processes using the product and the processor on which the product is to run. LMF compares the size of a registered license to the rating of the current processor and authorizes product use when a license supplies sufficient license units.

A copy of each LURT is published in either the OpenVMS release notes or installation documentation. Use the following command to determine the license unit requirements of your system:

$ SHOW LICENSE/UNIT_REQUIREMENTS

LMF compares the size of a registered license to the license unit requirement for the current processor and authorizes product use when a license supplies sufficient license units. Thus, you cannot load a license registered with fewer license units than a processor requires.

To check whether your license has an appropriate license unit value (size) for your processor, LMF performs the following process:

It looks for a code (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H or I) or a keyword (CONSTANT integer) next to either the Availability Table Code: field or the Activity Table Code: field in the registered license.
- If the license specifies CONSTANT and an integer value, LMF stops and defines the license unit requirement as equal to the stated integer value. This value could be the decimal value 0, which means the license has no unit limitations.
- If the license does not specify a constant unit requirement, LMF looks for a code that specifies license type and corresponds to a LURT.
Each LURT has a rating, in license units, for all available (and appropriate) processors. For example, the LURT for layered products includes the name of every processor that can run OpenVMS and associates a number of license units with each. The LURT for OpenVMS workstations includes the names of all OpenVMS workstations and their ratings. When Digital releases new processors, OpenVMS updates the tables as part of the new processor support.
LMF determines the model name of your processor. Although this manual generally refers to computer systems as processors, LMF actually identifies a system by its System Marketing Model (SMM) name, which is the model name of a computer system as used in marketing and pricing. The SMM is generally the name on the front panel of the processor cabinet.
LMF locates the SMM in the appropriate LURT and selects the value that specifies the number of units required for the named SMM and type of license.
LMF compares the number selected from the LURT to the number of units registered for your product license. If you have registered a value sufficient for your license and processor, the license is loaded successfully with the LICENSE LOAD command.

Table 1-1 shows an example of a License Unit Requirement Table. See the OpenVMS release notes or installation documentation for current LURTs.

Table 1-1 Sample License Unit Requirement Table F (Layered Products)
System Marketing Model Number of License Units Required

VAX 8800 2500

VAX 8700 1800

VAX 8650 1500

. .

. .

. .

MicroVAX A 135

MicroVAX 2000 135

The number of license units registered with any license should match or exceed the number of license units required for the specified product to run on the specified processor. For example, when you obtain a license for Digital Pascal to run on a VAXstation 3100 system, that Pascal license must specify at least the same number of license units as the LURT requires for a VAXstation 3100 system. The same Pascal license may not provide enough license units to authorize use of Pascal on a VAX 9000 system. The size of the license to run a software product on an OpenVMS Cluster environment must reflect the total number of concurrent users or processes and the processors on which the product will run.

Not all licenses have a specific number of units. Some licenses specify zero units, which is equivalent to unlimited units. Adjust the unit number as needed and as allowed by your license contract.

1.5 VMSLICENSE.COM

LMF provides the command procedure VMSLICENSE.COM to register, manage, and track software licenses. VMSLICENSE.COM provides a menu-driven interface that allows you to easily register and load your licenses. VMSLICENSE.COM executes LICENSE commands, which you can also issue manually. See Appendix A for a full description of each LICENSE command.

1.6 Types of Licenses

Different types of software product licenses enable you to allow access to each product in ways that range from access for a specific user on a specific processor to general access for all users on all processors within an OpenVMS Cluster. Table 1-2 describes the licenses that LMF supports.

Table 1-2 Types of Licenses
Type Identification on PAK License by See

Availability Availability Table Code has a nonzero value. Processor type (Requires Key Option ALPHA or VAX_ALPHA to load on Alpha processor.) Section 1.6.1

Activity Activity Table Code has a nonzero value. Concurrent uses (not users) Section 1.6.2

User Activity constant and Key Options: USER. Concurrent users (not uses) Section 1.6.4

Personal Use Activity constant and Key Options: RESERVE_UNITS. Named user Section 1.6.3

The license descriptions that follow provide information to help you understand and manage the product authorization process on VAX or Alpha computers using LMF, rather than to help you order software licenses. Digital provides licenses in many ways that may not always correspond to the examples in this manual. Check with your Digital support representative for ordering information, and check the terms and conditions of your license contracts for restrictions.

Contents

Index