Licensing

This article describes OpsDash licensing, and how to use OpsDash license files.

License Files

An OpsDash license file contains information about the duration of validity of the license and the number of servers that OpsDash will monitor. The files are named like:

A1B2C-3D4E5-F6G7H-8I9J0-A1B2C.lic

License files must be present in the /etc/opsdash directory on the machine where the OpsDash server is installed. They are read when the OpsDash server daemon starts up. On encountering a valid license, the log file at /var/log/opsdash/opsdash-server.log will report entries similar to:

2015/07/07 15:41:05.622250 licensing: found 1 licenses:
2015/07/07 15:41:05.622275 licensing- A1B2C-3D4E5-F6G7H-8I9J0-A1B2C count=100 (100+0) valid till 2015-09-27 21:10:50 -0400 EDT
2015/07/07 15:41:05.622283 licensing: licensed for 100 hosts until 2015-09-27 21:10:50 -0400 EDT

If there are multiple valid license files available, OpsDash will pick up the one with the expiry date furthest out in the future. Expired licenses will be reported in the log file.

*.lic files in /etc/opsdash that are not valid license files provided by RapidLoop will be silently ignored.

In case no valid license file are present, OpsDash will operate in a “free tier” mode which will allow monitoring of a few number of servers and services.

License files are used only on the OpsDash server installation. OpsDash agents do not use license files.

License files are valid from the time of purchase.

Updating Your License File

If you purchased a new license file from RapidLoop, you can follow the steps below to start using it:

  • Copy your new license file to the directory /etc/opsdash on the machine where the OpsDash server is installed.

  • Optionally, you can delete any old .lic files that may be present.

  • Ensure that the permissions on the file are such that the OpsDash server daemon is able to read the license file. The server daemon runs as user opsdash and group opsdash. We recommend the following permissions and ownership:

-rw-r----- 1 root opsdash    68 Jul  7 15:40 A1B2C-3D4E5-F6G7H-8I9J0-A1B2C.lic

  • Restart the OpsDash server daemon opsdash-serverd with a command like:

sudo service opsdash-serverd restart

  • Check the log file at /var/log/opsdash/opsdash-server.log to confirm that the new license file is in use.

Note that even if your old license file has not expired yet, you can still use this procedure – OpsDash will pick up the license which has the furthest expiry date.