MayaMan Licensing Setup

Like many graphics packages MayaMan uses the FlexLM system (http://www.globetrotter.com/flexlm/flexlm.shtml) for its licensing and copy protection. FlexLM offers great flexibility but at the cost of complexity at setup time. This page is to help you get going if you're not familiar with FlexLM licensing.

Obtaining a MayaMan License

You will not initially have a license to use MayaMan. You must request a license from the Animal Logic Web Site.

Other Animal Logic Products

If you already have Animal Logic products installed and running somewhere in your network then it's best to just add the MayaMan licenses to that server. To do this provide us with the lmhostid for the server machine and we'll generate new lines to be added into your existing AnimalL.dat file. After adding the new lines perform an lmreread operation on the AnimalL.dat file.

Animal Logic FLEXlm Installer

When you have a MayaMan license for your computer, you should download and run the Animal Logic FLEXlm Installer. This is available from ftp://ftp.al.com.au/pub/flexlm/AnimalLogicFLEXlm.zip. The installer will set up all the necessary files, and give you a set of shortcuts in your Start menu for administrating your Animal Logic licenses.

Afte running the installer and copying in your license file, you should be able to start the license server and use MayaMan. If not, you should be able to find help from the rest of this page.

The location where the licensing tools are installed to is referred to as ALFLEXLM for the remainder of this document.

Quick Overview of How FLEXlm works

FLEXlm requires three components in order for MayaMan to check out a license. Firstly, you need the license file (issued by Animal Logic) which specifies such things as what software you are licenses to use, how many copies of the software can be used concurrently, and when the license is due to expire.

Secondly, you need lmgrd.exe which is FLEXlm's own program. This is provided with the MayaMan distribution and can be found in the ALFLEXLM directory.

Thirdly, you need the AnimalL.exe daemon which is also provided in the ALFLEXLM directory.

Determining your lmhostid

There are two ways to determine your lmhostid on an NT machine.

The easiest way is to go to your Control Panel, where you should find an applet for 'FLEXlm License Manager'. Open this and go to the 'Diagnostics' tab. Click the 'Hostids' button. Some info will pop up. Copy down the HOSTNAME and the long string of numbers which looks like 00104b138ddd. This number is you lmhostid.

The other way to find your lmhostid is to locate the 'lmutil.exe' program (placed in ALFLEXLM by the licensing installer, or available from ftp://ftp.al.com.au/pub/maxman/lmutil.exe). With a command prompt, run lmutil.exe with the argument 'lmhostid'. e.g. C:\AnimalLogic\License\lmutil.exe lmhostid. You should see something like:

C:\WINNT>c:\AnimalLogic\License\lmutil.exe lmhostid
lmutil - Copyright (C) 1989-1999 Globetrotter Software, Inc.
The FLEXlm host ID of this machine is "00104b138ddd"

In this example, the number we need is 00104b138ddd, and this is this number you should enter in the License Request Form on the web site.

Keying off your Hard Drive

By default, FLEXlm host ids are keyed off your network card. However, this can cause problems for some people, so an alternative exists whereby you can generate a lmhostid from your hard drive's serial number.

To determine your lmhostid this way, follow the steps above, but use the '-vsn' option to lmutil. For example:

C:\WINNT>c:\AnimalLogic\License\lmutil.exe lmhostid -vsn
lmutil - Copyright (C) 1989-1999 Globetrotter Software, Inc.
The FLEXlm host ID of this machine is "DISK_SERIAL_NUM=94f90ddd"

Or you can use the FLEXlm control panel -> Diagnostics -> Hostids if you have the FLEXlm control panel installed on your system.

Be sure to always include the "DISK_SERIAL_NUM=" when quoting your lmhostid when generating it in this way.

An lmhostid of 0 or ffffffff

These two lmhostids may or may not work with the licenses we send you. If you have one of these hostids and your license doesn't work, follow these steps from the FLEXlm docs:

Q2.4 On NT, I'm getting a 0 hostid (or FFFFFFFF)--how do I fix this?

Using this type of hostid requires either the SNMP service, the NETBEUI Transport Protocol, or the NW Link (IPX/SPX) Transport Protocol to be loaded

To install the NETBEUI or NW Link Transport Protocol:

Put the NT system disk in the CDROM drive. Select `Main' Select `Control Panel' Select `Network' Select `Add' And add the NWLink IPX SPX or NetBEUI driver.

Alternatively, you can key off your hard drive's serial number to generate a license. See above.

Required Steps to Have Your License Available

You must have a license file, which has the correct name of your server, its lmhostid, and the location of the AnimalL.exe daemon
You must then run 'lmgrd.exe -c PATH_TO_YOUR_LICENSE_FILE', e.g. 'c:\animallogic\license\lmgrd.exe -c c:\animallogic\license\AnimalL.dat'. If all goes well you can now run MayaMan whilst lmgrd is running.

Sounds easy right? But for some reason a lot of people have troubles with FLEXlm (ourselves included!)

Running the Daemon

You have two choices of how you can run the license daemon. Firstly, you can run it in a shell (as above) whenever you need it. This is a bit of a pain. A better thing to do is to install the daemon as an NT service, so that it starts automatically whenever you boot your machine.

If you select the "FLEXlm License Daemon" when installing MayaMan it will automatically install the license daemon, but it won't work until you edit the license file (ALFLEXLM/AnimalL.dat) and stop and restart the license server.

After you have installed MayaMan (selecting the FLEXlm License Daemon" option) you will find some handy shortcuts under Start->Programs->MayaMan->FLEXlm Daemon for installing, uninstalling, stopping, starting and rereading a new license file for the daemon.

You can also add, remove and modify your FLEXlm license daemons running as services through the FLEXlm Control Panel, found with your other Control Panel applets under Start->Settings->Control Panel.

Still stuck?

Ask your systems administrators for help, or contact support@al.com.au.

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