Login
  
 

Using a Floating License Server 

The License Server allows multiple workstations to share licenses hosted on a single machine. Workstations connect via IP or network address to check out licenses as needed and release them when done.

To monitor and manage license usage, we provide a License Manager application. It displays available licenses, amount of active users, and authorized products. You can also manually end sessions to free up licenses without waiting for the default 15-minute timeout—useful for troubleshooting and network checks.

Before Installing:
  • If you have previously installed license server, please uninstall it first.
  • Make sure that all of your licenses are unassigned for the product in question. If you never installed the license server for current product you do not need to worry about this.
  • Go to the product's downloads page and look under the version which you are trying to install.
  • Find the "Install license server only" text and below it, if there is a "All X Licenses" link you are ready to proceed.

    If there is no "All X Licenses" link please sure to release all your licenses first.
 

Installation 

  1. Click on "All X Licenses" link and download the installer program.
  2. Once downloaded, run it on the computer that you want to use as your your license server.
  3. Click "Install License" button when prompted.

Just for reference, these are the default locations on your computer where the license server executable is installed:

  • Windows:
    %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ephere\
  • OSX:
    ~/.local/share/Ephere/
  • Linux:
    ~/.local/share/Ephere/
 

Note about firewalls and antivirus software 

Some anti-virus software such as Kaspersky and Windows Defender has been known to treat Ephere License Server service as a threat on Windows and automatically disable and delete it. If this happens to you, please reinstall the license server from our website and set a rule for your anti-virus software to skip (or white list) Ephere License Server when detecting threats. Our service does not pose any risks to your computer and does not do anything to compromise your security.

If at some point you get the above message, it means that something in your system is preventing the licensing software from connecting to the internet. It is also possible that your local firewall could be blocking the port used by the licensing software to perform its connections. Please make sure that ports 39373 and 39374 are not blocked by your firewall by white-listing it.

 

Note about Administrator privileges 

On some user accounts you may be required to run the downloaded license installer from a Windows Command Line window which has been started using Administrator privileges.

 

Note about Virtual Machines (VMs) 

Our license server may only be installed on a physical computer directly. We do not support installations on virtual machines (i.e. VMWare, VirtualBox, Azure, etc.)h1. Installing a Floating License Server

 

Installing the Server Manager 

Use this link to download the manager executable:
attachment:Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.Manager.exe

This is for Windows only, the manager is included with the Ornatrix installation on Mac/Linux (see below).

Simply extract and run it, then specify the server IP to connect to.

 

Usage 

 

GUI App (Windows) 

  • Run the manager application (Windows only, .NET 4.0 required)
  • Enter the IP of a license server. This can be "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" for service installed on the same computer or a LAN/internet IP of a service on another computer.
  • Press Refresh to get information from the server. If everything is OK the licenses list will show your currently authorized projects, number of licenses for each, and when these licenses expire. If there is an error you will be notified with a message box. Check your connection and that the license service is started inside Windows services dialog.
  • Select a project from the licenses list, for example "ephere.plugins.autodesk.max.ornatrix", the sessions list will be updated with IP addresses of currently connected users using this project. If the list is empty there are currently no connections. The maximum number of such connections is the license count from the licenses list.
  • Select an IP address to be able to press the End Session button. This option will discontinue selected session, essentially kicking the user from using that license. The user will then need to reconnect to the license server to re-authorize their currently running workstation.

Please note that you need to manually press Refresh button every time you expect to see a change. The lists are not automatically repopulated.

 

Console App (Windows) 

License manager can also be used as a console application and return all licensing information to the output. To use it as a console application simply run it from the Windows Command Line prompt (cmd). Usage is as follows:

Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.Manager.exe <ServerAddress> [projectName [/available | /used | /users | /total]]

 

Examples 

Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.Manager.exe localhost
Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.Manager.exe 127.0.0.1 ephere.plugins.autodesk.max.ornatrix.4
Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.Manager.exe 127.0.0.1 ephere.plugins.autodesk.maya.ornatrix.1 /used
Flags:
  • /used Will output only licenses which are currently in use
  • /users Will output the IP addresses of clients which are currently using the licenses
  • /available Will output all licenses contained within the license server
  • /total Will return total number of licenses installed for specified product
 

Console App (Mac/Linux) 

The license manager on Mac and Linux is installed with the plugin and the license server and is similar to Windows, but only works as a command-line tool. Simply run LicenseManager.sh with these command arguments:

Linux:

$ /opt/Ephere/LicenseManager.sh <ServerAddress> [projectName  [/available | /used | /users | /total]]

Mac:

$ /Applications/Ephere/LicenseManager.sh <ServerAddress> [projectName  [/available | /used | /users | /total]]

 

Examples 

$ /opt/Ephere/LicenseManager.sh localhost ephere.plugins.autodesk.maya.ornatrix.1
 

Uninstall 

 

Automatic Uninstall on Windows (Recommended) 

Ephere license server runs as a service on your Windows computer. It can take care of uninstalling itself, however, you need to do the following steps to initiate this procedure:

  1. Open Windows Command Prompt.
  2. Type cd C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Ephere. Replace USERNAME with your local user account name.
  3. Type Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.exe stopAndUninstall
  4. Upon successful uninstallation, close the command prompt window
  5. (Optional) Open Windows Services dialog and make sure that "Ephere License Server" service is no longer present.
 

Manual Uninstall 

If automatic uninstall does not work or gives you errors you may choose to manually remove Ephere License Server service from your computer. This is needed when the license server installed is old (before 2015). To do so:

 

On Windows Vista and newer: 

  1. Run Windows Command Prompt with Administrator privileges on the computer where "Ephere License Server" service is running
  2. Type sc delete "Ephere License Server" and press Enter
    If the above step results in an error run sc delete "EphereLicenseServer" instead
  3. On some computers a restart may be required, so restart the computer
  4. Open Windows Services dialog and make sure that "Ephere License Server" service is no longer present

If the above procedure fails, for example if you receive ACCESS DENIED error please try to uninstall the license service using Windows Powershell:

  1. Open Powershell with administrator privileges (Windows menu -> Powershell -> Right click -> Run as Administrator)
  2. Type in 
    $service = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter "Name='Ephere License Server'"
  3. Type in 
    $service.delete()
 

On Windows XP: 

  1. Run Regedit (Windows Key + R, type in "regedit", press Enter)
  2. Go to the registry entry "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services"
  3. Find item called "Ephere License Server" and delete it. You can also look at "ImagePath" entry under it and delete the exe file found there.
 

On Mac OS 

Execute the following command from the terminal :

/Applications/Ephere/Mono64/bin/mono ~/.local/share/Ephere/Ephere.Licensing.LicenseServer.exe stopanduninstall

Optional: Uninstalling deletes the .exe and .exe.config files, but leaves the (possible) EphereServiceLog.txt file and the ~/.local/share/Ephere directory.

To remove that if necessary, follow up with `rm -rf ~/.local/share/Ephere` to remove the directory, or just `rm -rf ~/.local` if there is no other Mono software on the machine, which will also delete the OrnatrixMayaLicenseServerIP.txt and OrnatrixMayaSetupFilepath.txt files.

 

On Linux 

Follow the same steps as for OS X, just replace /Applications/Ephere with /opt/Ephere, or the folder you manually installed to.

Missing Something? Let us know if this page needs more information about the topic.
 
 
Copyright © 2003-2025, Ephere Inc.  |  Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy