Importing a License

2021 saw an upgrade to the licensing tools with fglWrt / flm version 6.  This upgrade better positioned Four Js to add functionality to the licensing tools and one such piece of functionality more recently added in 6.00.13 was the addition of the import-license verb, followed by the import-all-licenses verb in 6.00.16

The Four Js licensing mechanism ties your license to a Genero installation on a server.  It records various server details and the installation directory against the license.  You change any of these details (such as copying the Genero installation from one directory/server to another) and the licensed software no longer works.  You have to go through the New Activation Key Request (NAKR) procedure, fill out a form,  to reinstall your license in the new location.  This meant the following …

• If you were licensing your Genero installation locally via fglWrt (that is not using Four Js License manager), AND you installed each release of Genero in a unique directory (e.g. /opt/fourjs/fgl/version) then you had to go through the NAKR procedure whenever you upgraded your Genero installation.
• If you were using Four Js License manager, AND you installed each release of Four Js License Manager in a unique directory (e..g /opt/fourjs/flm/version) then you had to go through the NAKR procedure whenever you upgraded your Four Js License manager installation.

The addition of the import-license verb to both fglWrt , greWrt (3), and flmprg commands means that you no longer need to go through the NAKR procedure in these simple cases where you simply want to upgrade the version of Genero and Four Js License Manager used AND where you install these tools into a seperate directory for each version (that is you do not install ‘over the top’ (2).

If you licensed Genero locally, in the scenario of the most recent maintenance release, you might have had Genero BDL installed in /opt/fourjs/fgl/5.00.00 and installed the maintenance release into /opt/fourjs/fgl/5.00.01.  Instead of going through the NAKR procedure you can simply now execute the following …

cd /opt/fourjs/fgl/5.00.01
. ./envcomp
fglWrt import-license --from /opt/fourjs/fgl/5.00.00

… to import the license from your 5.00.00 installation into your 5.00.01 installation. (1)

Similarly if you are upgrading Four Js License Manager, in the scenario of the most recent maintenance release, you might have had Genero FLM installed in /opt/fourjs/flm/6.00.19 and installed the maintenance release into /opt/fourjs/fgl/6.00.20  Instead of going through the NAKR procedure to relicense all licenses you can simply now execute the following …

cd /opt/fourjs/flm/6.00.20
. ./envflm
flmprg import-all-licenses --from /opt/fourjs/flm/6.00.19

or you could do one license at time with …

flmprg import-license --from /opt/fourjs/flm/6.00.19 --license TAB#XXXXXXXX

Both techniques, move the license from one installation to another installation.  A word of warning, in both scenarios it means the older installation is no longer licensed.  So if for some reason you need to run the older version, you would either need to repeat the procedure in the other direction, or install a license temporarily in the older version.

Hopefully you can see the potential of this new verb and how it would allow you to do some tasks yourself immediately without going through the New Activation Key Request (NAKR) procedure and being dependent on a  response from our licensing team.

Notes

(1) In development environments I recommend you do not license locally but use Four Js License Manager, as noted here. This means you do not typically need to worry about NAKR or importing licenses when you upgrade your Genero installation.  When you install a new Genero version you simply install it into its unique directory and configure it via fgllicense to use Four Js License Manager.  Only when you then upgrade Four Js License manager do you then need to pay attention to the steps in this article

(2) Some customers choose to install “over the top”, that is install FGL into /opt/fourjs/fgl and FLM into opt/fourjs/flm, and to then install maintenance releases over the top in this same directory and thus not have to worry about relicensing.  I am not a fan of this technique as it does not allow you to easily rollback or to check and compare behaviour of the previous version.

(3) greWrt operates in a similar manner to fglWrt.