The following steps are designed to get X-Formation's License Statistics up and running on Linux with a FLEXlm/FlexNet server in 10 minutes or less.

Important: When upgrading License Statistics to a new version, be sure to make a backup (see Backing up the database) and then remove the current installation before installing the new version. The License Statistics installation will not remove the currently installed version and will not install a new version into the same location as a previous version. 

Step 1: Download the License Statistics installation file.

Download the License Statistics installation from the Support Portal as instructed in your download email, and double-click the .sh file to begin the installation. The installation wizard will step you through the procedure.

Note the following:

• You can install License Statistics on any machine, not necessarily the license server.
• You must be logged in as root if you want the installation to create an init script.
• The installation program works on most Linux distributions; however, if you have a problem running the installer, you can run license_statistics.sh from a command prompt.

Step 2: Activate the license.

Note: License activation is not necessary for the trial version. If you are running License Statistics for evaluation purposes, please continue to Step 3.

After the installation is complete, activate your License Statistics license as described in Activating a License Statistics License.

Note that you must re-activate your license whenever you upgrade your license or renew your maintenance.

Step 3: Configure License Statistics for your site.

Open /usr/xflicstat/xflicstat.cfg in a text editor such as Notepad, and make the following changes:

• Change the setting for UPDATE_INTERVAL from 10 minutes to 1 minute, to generate statistics every minute. This setting will let you quickly confirm that License Statistics is running normally, which you'll do in Step 6. (After you verify that License Statistics is running normally, you should change this setting to a larger value.)

• Uncomment one of the FLEXNET_SERVER lines and enter the information for the server you want to monitor in the format \[port\]@host, where port is optional (leave blank to use the default port) and host is the name or IP address of the license server. For example, FLEXNET_SERVER = 27000@host1. (If you need to monitor more than one server, you can specify additional servers in the same manner later.)

• Uncomment the LMUTIL_PATH line.

• Save and close the configuration file.

Step 4: Ensure you have the latest lmutil version.

You must use lmutil v9.2 or newer with License Statistics. (To check your lmutil version, run lmutil -v from a command line.) You can request a download of the newest lmutil version from http://www.globes.com/support/fnp_utilities_download.htm.

Step 5: Start the service.

Run the Usage Monitor as a daemon by entering the following command from a Linux command line:

./xflicstat -b /path/configfile

where /path/configfile is the full path to the Usage Monitor configuration file; for example:

./xflicstat -b ./xflicstat.cfg

If you execute this command outside of the License Statistics installation directory, you must designate the path using an additional command line variable; for example:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/xflicstat/" /usr/xflicstat/xflicstat -b /usr/xflicstat/xflicstat.cfg

Note: If you created the License Statistics init script during installation, we recommend using the init script to start the service.

Step 6: Test that the Usage Monitor is running normally.

• A couple of minutes after starting the service, review the log file (/usr/xflicstat/log/xflicstat.log) and ensure it contains no FAIL or WARNING lines. Output similar to the following indicates the service is running normally:

[2012-01-02 13:44:50] Ready for querying...
[2012-01-02 13:44:50] To view statistics please go to http://localhost:80

• Check results in your browser by going to http://localhost:80. The first time you access the License Statistics web interface, your login information is set to username = admin, password = admin.

• If you do not see any results, check whether the License Statistics web server port specified in the configuration file (which defaults to port 80) is busy. If needed, you can specify a different port as described in this article.