Floating Licenses

Floating licenses are powered by LimeLM TurboFloat Server from wyDay.

This guide will help you get set-up with a license server, on-premise, and instruct BroTools to "lease" a license from it. The server itself can run on any machine and any platform, including Windows, Linux, MacOS or FreeBSD, so long as it is accessible from the machine running BroTools.

Looking for Regular, Site or Enterprise licensing?

If you are looking for Regular, Site or Enterprise licenses, please, proceed here.

Overview

On each platform, the procedure is the same.

1. Download the server software
2. Download TurboActivate.dat file (It can also be found inside BroTools\core\system directory)
3. Place TurboActivate.dat file next to the server executable
4. Optionally edit the configuration file
5. Activate the server with your Product Key
6. Start it up

The server will need to remain running in order for BroTools to lease licenses.

Where to find TurboActivate.dat file

A link to appropriate TurboActivate.dat file is emailed to you upon purchase. You can also find the file inside BroTools bundle archive at BroTools\core\system\TurboActivate.dat, which you can copy and use in further steps as well.

Linux

Here's a typical series of commands for an x64 system, look inside the .zip for alternative Linux-based platforms.

mkdir turbofloat
cd turbofloat
wget https://api.brotools.tech/v2/download_turbofloat/TurboFloat-Server-Linux.zip
wget https://api.brotools.tech/v2/download_turbofloat_dat/BroTools -O TurboActivate.dat
unzip TurboFloat-Server-Linux.zip
mv bin-linux/x64/turbofloatserver ./
chmod +x turbofloatserver
./turbofloatserver -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER"
./turbofloatserver -x

From here, you'll likely want turbofloatserver -x called automatically on reboot, such that BroTools and Maya can lease licenses from it. The exact procedure varies between Linux distributions and company preferences, so I won't go into details about all of them the procedure, but systemd is a common option. You might also want to add -silent command flag when running it as a service, so the command would look like: turbofloatserver -x -silent

Autostart with systemd

Here's a rough idea of how you can set it up to autostart on systems using systemd.

Put this into a file at `/etc/systemd/system/brotools_turbofloat.service

[Unit]
Description=BroTools TurboFloat server
User=root # Optional
Group=root # Optional

[Service]
Type=simple 
ExecStart=/path/to/turbofloatserver -x -silent

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable brotools_turbofloat.service
sudo service brotools_turbofloat start
sudo service brotools_turbofloat status

More details

• Installation Options
• Configuration Options

Windows

Here's what you need to do to get TurboFloat server up and running on a Windows machine.

First - Download TurboFloat Server (TFS) for Windows Unzip the archive. Inside you will find a bin-windows folder, and inside of it there are sub-directories for different platforms like x64, x86 and ARM, each with it's own TurboFloat.exe file compailed for a different platform. Typically you would use the bin-windows\x64\TurboFloat.exe.

Download the appropriate TurboActivate.dat file that was emailed to you upon purchse and put it next to the TurboFloat.exe of your choice.

Finally you will also need to move or copy the TurboFloatServer-config.xml file from the root of the archive and also put it next to the chosen TurboFloat.exe file.

You don't have to do it exactly this way

In the end you just need to have a folder with 3 files in it: TurboFloat.exe, TurboFloatServer-config.xml, TurboFloat.dat, like this:

Activate

Now you need to activate the server. Use this command in CMD, PowerShell or Windows Terminal:

TurboFloatServer.exe -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER"

There should be no output from the command, unless there's a problem.

Start and Install

You can run the server in the current PowerShell or CMD.exe terminal using this command:

TurboFloatServer.exe -x
# Floating license server for BroTools (TFS v4.4.3.0)

This will not persist after a reboot of the machine. For that we need to Install the server.

To do that you'll need to launch PowerShell or CMD as Administrator and run the following command:

# As Administrator
TurboFloatServer.exe -i
# 2021-05-24, 17:42:34 <notification>: Service installed successfully.

This "installation" does three things:

1. It installs the TurboFloat Server instance as a Windows Service set to start with the computer and run silently in the background.
2. It configures the TurboFloat Server to allow inbound connections in the Windows Firewall (unless the Windows Firewall service is disabled, in which case it skips this step).
3. It starts the TurboFloat Server immediately.

From here you can try launching BroTools in Maya to see whether it manages to successfully lease a license.

Configuration

You may need to adjust the default configuration, because by default TurboFloat is using port 13 and Windows is known to block low port numbers by default. To change the port you need to open TurboFloatServer-config.xml file and change the line <bind port="13"/> to a port number of your choice. For example: 1231

More details

• Installation Options
• Configuration Options

MacOS and FreeBSD

For these operating systems you can refer to the official TurboFloat documentation.

Download TurboFloat Server (TFS) for MacOS

Maya, Workstations

Now that you have your license server up and running it is time to set up BroTools to connect to it.

To use Floating licensing BroTools can be installed in a central network shared location or on each machine individually.

Make sure that TurboActivate.dat file exists under BroTools/core/system folder.

After that, on each Workstation you will need to set an environment variable BROTOOLS_FLOATING. For example:

Windows CMDBashPython

# In Windows CMD you can permanently set environment variable like this
SETX BROTOOLS_FLOATING "192.168.1.69:1231"

# Environment like bash. You may need to use other features e.g. $HOME/.bashrc or /etc/environment to make these variables permanent
export BROTOOLS_FLOATING="192.168.1.69:1231"

To make changes persistent, for example, on CentOS 7 you can do it like this:

echo "BROTOOLS_FLOATING=192.168.1.69:1231" >> ~/.bash_profile
echo "export BROTOOLS_FLOATING" >> ~/.bash_profile

And reboot.

To unset this variable, remove those lines from ~/.bash_profile file and reboot. I'm sure there could be a better way of doing this which I may not know of.

# Python - environment variable must be set before BroTools plugin is loaded
os.environ["BROTOOLS_FLOATING"] = "192.168.1.69:1231"
cmds.loadPlugin("BroTools.py")

The format of BROTOOLS_FLOATING is {ip-address}:{port-number}. Where port-number is the port number you chose in TurboFloatServer-config.xml.

TurboFloat Server Offline activation

It is possible to activate TurboFloat Server offline.

For that run the following command on the TurboFloat server:

WindowsLinux

TurboFloatServer.exe -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER" -areq="C:\Location\To\Save\ActivationRequest.xml"

./turbofloatserver -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER" -areq="~/ActivationRequest.xml"

Then email the resulting file to [email protected] Within 2-5 working days you will receive an ActivationResponse.xml file in a response email which you can place anywhere and then run the second command:

WindowsLinux

TurboFloatServer.exe -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER" -areq="C:\Path\To\Downloaded\ActivationResponse.xml"

./turbofloatserver -a="YOUR-SERIAL-NUMBER" -areq="~/ActivationResponse.xml"

This process will be automated in the future.