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[REVIEW/TEST] Guidelines for installing and licensing IDL via mounted or shared drives on Linux

Ben Castellani

NOTE: This information is only relevant for IDL 8.6.1 and newer versions.

Users that wish to install IDL on a shared/NFS mounted drive for use by various workstations on the network or cluster nodes will need to make a few changes to allow IDL's licensing to function properly for all users/nodes.

For mounted/shared installations, it is recommended to use a floating license server configuration. With this set-up, each user of IDL will be checking out a license from a server to authorize IDL.

The steps to do this are:

  1. Install the Flexnet License Server on a computer on the network. This doesn't have to be the same physical machine that is hosting the mounted IDL installation, but it often is. See this Help Article for instructions on setting up the Flexnet License Server on Linux.
  2. Within the mounted installation, point to the license server using the server's IP address or hostname, and port number that the license manager is running on. See this Help Article for detailed instructions on how to configure IDL to point to a license server.
  3. Create a symbolic link within the IDL installation following the instructions below. This is important to prevent the licensing failures which can occur when too many client machines are reading and writing from the mounted installations /license/flexera-sv directory.

cd /usr/local/harris/license

ln -s /var/tmp /usr/local/harris/license/flexera-sv/

Essentially, this symbolic link will direct /flexera-sv to a local directory on each user's local computer. In this case, their /var/tmp directory. You may choose another directory, but that linked location must have 777 permissions.  

NOTE: At this time, node-locked licensing for mounted installations is not supported for IDL 8.6.1 and newer versions.