© Tweak Software

RV Client License Management

Overview

RV requires an accessible license file (called license.gto) in order to run. The license file either directly provides a license or indicates one or more servers from which to obtain one. Each platform has a different set of places in which RV tries to find a license file. If it is unable to find it, it will complain and exit immediately.

OS X

On OS X, RV looks in four separate places to find the license file:

  1. Inside the Application at RV.app/Contents/Resources/license.gto

  2. In your home directory at ~/Library/Application Support/RV/license.gto

  3. In the system directory at /Library/Application Support/RV/license.gto

  4. On the Network at /Network/Library/Application Support/RV/license.gto

RV will look for the file in the order above. The first license it requires is the one which it will use.

When RV starts without a license, it will open the License Installer application. This application will merge licenses and/or add a server license if needed. The installer always adds the server license last so that machine locked licenses are used first. When you save the license file it is saved in two places:

  1. Inside the application at RV.app/Contents/Resouces/license.gto

  2. In the system directory at /Library/Application Support/RV/license.gto

The installer may require authentication.

Linux

On Linux, RV looks for the license file in three locations:

  1. In the current directory.

  2. Inside the RV package directory at build/license.gto.

  3. On the local machine at /var/tweak/license.gto.

The license file is a text GTO file which contains any number of machine locked licenses and/or locations of servers to contact to find a license. RV will ignore licenses which do not apply to the machine it is running on, so its OK to have many machine locked licenses in a single file. A typical license file will look something like this:

GTOa (3)

c498a8f831da62168d21065af1bedbac0038273a : license (1)
{
    license
    {
        string package = "rv"
        string version = "any"
        string expires = "permanent"
        int count = 1
        string hostID = "00:0A:95:AE:F9:E0"
        string issued = "12-Jul-2006"
        int duration = 0
        string reason = "web"
        string licensee = "Jack Foo Bar"
        string email = "jackfoobar@myemail.com"
        string machine = "brutus"
        string os = "any"
    }
}

In this case, there is a single machine locked license. The first line of the file identifies the file type and is not part of the license. Some of the information is for the licensee’s use only (machine name, etc). Multiple licenses in one file would have the form:

GTOa (3)


c498a8f831da62168d21065af1bedbac0038273a : license (1)
{
    license
    {
        ... etc ...
    }
}

q431a8f831da62168d21065af1bedbac0038c421 : license (1)
{
    license
    {
        ... etc ...
    }
}
... etc ...

Here each block starting with the long hash is the start of a license for an individual machine. If the file is indicating to the client that it should look up a server, it would look like this:

GTOa (3)

server : floatinglicense (1)
{
    id
    {
        string hostname = "licenseserver.ourdomain.local"
        int port = 5445
    }
}

In this case licenserver.outdomain.local would be the name of the machine running the license server that RV should contact to obtain a license. A GTO file can contain any combination of machine locked licenses and server floating licenses.

The first license in the file that works is the one used. If you wish to have both machine locked and floating licenses in one file, the best behavior is usually obtained by putting the machine locked licenses before the server. This way the dedicated licenses are used up before the floating licenses.