LM-X License Manager supports license borrowing, which lets you use a network license without being connected to the license server. Borrowing is commonly used in cases such as taking a laptop computer home for the weekend or for traveling off-site, giving you access to the software when a connection to the network is not possible.

Your software vendor must allow license borrowing for it to be available for your use. In some cases, the vendor may supply an interface for borrowing or returning licenses. Otherwise, you can borrow and do an early return of licenses by setting an LM-X environment variable specifically for this purpose.

Use the following steps to borrow a license using an LM-X environment variable. (Instructions given for accessing environment variable settings are for Windows 7. Please see your OS documentation or your system administrator for instructions on editing environment variables for your specific OS.)

  1. Open the Windows Control Panel and select System and Security.
  2. Select System from the System and Security options.
  3. Select Advanced system settings from the list of options in the left column of the System window.
  4. From the System Properties dialog that appears, select Environment Variables... 
  5. Under System variables, select New...
  6. For the Variable name, enter LMX_BORROW or vendor_BORROW (where vendor is the name of the software vendor for the software to be borrowed). Set the value to the number of hours for which you want to borrow the license. This number cannot be greater than the number of hours the software vendor allows.
  7. Click OK to add the variable.
  8. Click OK from the Environment Variables dialog to save your changes, and then click OK from the System Properties dialog.
    If you're running the application, be sure to restart it after setting the environment variable change to ensure that the settings are picked up. The license will be borrowed the next time you checkout the license and will be available for the specified duration, after which the application will no longer be available without connecting to the license server.
  9. If you want to do an early return of the license at any time before its expiration, repeat the steps above to access the environment variables, then select LMX_BORROW from the list of environment variables, and click Edit.
  10. Change the value to -1 (or any negative value). This will return the license so it's once again available for other users to check out.

Note: You can query the server to see whether a license is borrowed at any time using the LM-X End-user Configuration Tool or LM-X End-user utility, lmxendutil.

In very rare cases, the client may not receive a borrowed license due to network problems that occur at the exact time a license is being borrowed. Because borrowing is not transaction based, the server may see the borrow as successful and will not allow the client to attempt another borrow. Instead, a second borrow request will fail with the message "Feature already borrowed on server." The client must then wait until the borrow time expires to successfully borrow a license if this network problem occurs.