Automated License Server

If your company runs a server computer, you may want to set up the RLM license server to start automatically at boot time. To do this, Reprise offers the function to set up the RLM license server to run as a service on your machine.

Running RLM as a Windows Service

This section assumes you have already completed the basic steps of setting up your license server, if you haven’t, please refer to Floating-cached Licenses.

  1. Make sure your license server is not running.

  2. Open a command terminal by right-clicking and choosing “run as administrator”.

  3. Enter your user-defined directory where the rlm executable is located.

  4. Enter the commands for setting up a Windows service. An example of how this can look like is:
    rlm.exe -install_service -service_name rlm-xyz -dlog c:\logs\server.log -c c:\licenses\xyz.lic.

    1. the -install_service input indicates that a service is to be installed.

    2. The -service name input is required, it creates the name of your Windows service. It is recommended to give the service an easily recognizable name.

    3. The input -dlog specifies the location of the server logs and it is a required input.

    4. Lastly, you need to point RLM to the location of your license, this is done by the input -c <path_to_license>.

If you need to delete the service, run a terminal as administrator and point it to your RLM directory and execute the command: rlm.exe -delete_service -service_name <name_of_your_service>.

Notes

The "-install_service" command does not start your license server, to start it, you need to navigate to the Windows service list, or restart your computer.

If you receive the error message: “Error: Access to Service Control Manager denied”, it typically means that RLM could not get proper access to create a Windows service. To fix this, make sure that your terminal was started with “run as administrator” and that your RLM directories are granted proper access. This error can also occur if you have tried to set up the Windows service with an administrator account. Reprise has the following to say about this issue:

The solution is to create a service user who isn’t an administrator to run the service as. The service can be configured to be run as the service user one of two ways. Either:

  • Use the -user and -password parameters when creating the service. or

  • Create the service and then modify the service and change the "Log On User". That is, the important part is that a separate user account is created and that it is granted proper access to modify the services on your machine.

Further information regarding the different parameters of setting up a service on your Windows machine can be found in the RLM user-guide, https://www.reprisesoftware.com/RLM_License_Administration.pdf.