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License files.

For the usage of the "collect" suite of programs a valid user license is required.

A user license can be requested at Nonius by means of the nlicense program. The user license can be stored in different locations:

'nonius-license.dat' in the current directory
'nonius-license.dat' in your HOME directory
'/usr/local/nonius/license.dat'
'/usr/local/lib/nonius-license.dat'

If no valid license can be found in either of these four locations, a default license is loaded from '/usr/local/nonius/app/default-license.dat'. This license is valid until June 1999 on any machine. If you want to continue using the "collect" suite, you will need to acquire your own license before the generic license expires.

For the complete KappaCCD system two more licenses are required: one for the HKL system and one for the maXus package. There is more information on KappaCCD licenses on the Nonius WWW.

A "collect" license looks like this:

  ////
  machid 2:34f1:f22:b:2d61:25d1
  name Rob Hooft
  email rob.hooft@bruker-axs.nl
  institute Bruker AXS BV, Oostsingel 209, Delft
  hostname devel
  modules source
  generated 913639374
  expires 929191374
  //
  7411DDD7D19965B20491280A7292ECB2BDD0EC2E,8AE8D435F9DC75F7D487D53A8C026693900648DB
  ////

A single license file can contain as many licenses as necessary. Any pair of licenses must be separated by a line containing just four slash characters ("////").

The first section of the license shows some variables identifying your system.

"machid": An identifier of your computer. It should never change during the lifetime of the operating system. When the operating system is upgraded, reinstalled or restored from a backup, you might need to re-apply for a license. Note that this means the "hostname" is not checked against the license: this field is just for you as user to be able to recognize for which machine the license was written. You can safely change the hostname later without having to re-apply for a license (BUT DO NOT CHANGE THE LICENSE FILE!).
"generated": The time in seconds since 1 Jan 1970 00:00 GMT when the license was generated.
"expires": The time when the license will expire. Programs will start warning you to get a new license when the expiry time is less than 90 days away.
"modules": A list of optional modules for which the license is valid.

In the second part, after the "//", a digital signature is given in hexadecimal form. The DSS (Digital Signature Standard) algorithm, using public key cryptographic techniques, is used to generate this signature. This means that even if you know how to validate the signature, there is no way of generating your own licenses.

Although a number of the fields in the top part are not explicitly used by the programs to check the license, any change in wording, spacing, or ordering will invalidate the digital signature.

Previous: data redundancy
Next: format of ".rmat" files for unit cell orientation and transformation matrices