How to manage and update the IDL 8.2 / ENVI 5.0 license manager service on Mac OS X

THIS INFORMATION ONLY PERTAINS TO SOFTWARE VERSIONS IDL 8.5, ENVI 5.3 AND PRIOR

Topic: 

The FLEXnet license manager service on Mac OS X, for IDL 8.2 and ENVI 5.0, is implemented as an on-demand system service that will launch automatically the first time an IDL or ENVI session requests a license seat. 

This on-demand service model causes the Exelis license manager service to attempt to relaunch if the service dies unexpectedly. Consequently the IDL 8.2 and ENVI 5.0 Exelis license manager service needs to be administered differently than that for previous versions of IDL and ENVI.

Discussion:

Installing the Exelis license manager service and updating your license file for IDL 8.2 and ENVI 5.0

• The best/easiest way to install/upgrade license server-based Exelis product licenses is to run the "exelislicense" utility from an X11 terminal with "sudo" privileges.
  
  From a bash shell issue the commands:
  
  
  cd /Applications/exelis/idl82/bin
  . ./idl_setup.bash
  sudo ./exelislicense

• To just uninstall/reinstall and configure the Exelis license manager service all at once, issue the following commands (from a bash shell):
  
  
  cd /Applications/exelis/idl82/bin
  . ./idl_setup.bash
  sudo ./lmgrd_install

Manually stopping and starting the Exelis license manager service

The on-demand service configuration of the Exelis license manager service requires the use of the "launchctl" command to manually install/start , and uninstall/stop the service.

• To manually unconfigure/stop the Exelis license manager service, issue the command:
  
  
  sudo /bin/launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.exelis.lmgrd.plist

• To manually reconfigure/start the Exelis license manager service, issue the command:
  
  
  sudo /bin/launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.exelis.lmgrd.plist

• To manually restart a new instance of the Exelis license manager service without reconfiguring the service, use the lmdown command, for example:
  
  
  cd /Applications/exelis/idl82/bin
  . ./idl_setup.bash
  sudo ./lmdown -force -c /Applications/exelis/license/license.dat

• This will force the Exelis license manager to stop and then the system's on-demand service daemon will automatically start a new instance of the Exelis license manager.

Accessing the Exelis license manager service's debug log messages

By default, the Exelis license manager debug log information on Mac OS X is sent to the Apple Console. To access this log, run the "Console" application that resides in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory. The Exelis license manager service entries are marked with the label "com.exelis.lmgrd".