Run Arm® Licence Server

This section describes the process for setting up the Arm® Licence Server and configuring it to start automatically during system boot.

Before you begin

For security reasons, ensure that Arm® Licence Server runs as an unprivileged user. For example, nobody, or preferably a dedicated user. Furthermore, Arm recommends restricting the visibility of the host running the Arm® Licence Server only to trusted users, and hidden externally.
Arm® Licence Server includes a systemd init configuration file for Linux systems.
If Arm® Licence Server runs without arguments, it uses licenses in the current directory (files matching Licence* or the variant spelling License*). You can include an optional argument to specify an alternative directory location instead of the current directory.
Floating license server files are stored by default in the Arm® Licence Server installation directory (/opt/arm/licenceserver/<version>/licences). This is also the directory the systemd unit configuration uses by default.

To create an unprivileged user and allocate a log directory, run these commands as root.
```
useradd --system --user-group --no-create-home \
     --home-dir /opt/arm/licenceserver/<version> allinea
mkdir /var/log/arm
chown allinea: /var/log/arm
```
This creates the user allinea and the log directory /var/log/arm. The user is assigned ownership of the log directory. The /opt/arm/licenceserver/<version> directory is the location of the Arm® Licence Server installation. The license server log file is /var/log/arm/allinea.log.

Note

If you install the Arm® Licence Server in a custom installation path, set the ARM_LICENSE_DIR environment variable to point to the custom license directory. ALLINEA_LICENSE_DIR is still supported and can be used instead of ARM_LICENSE_DIR.

Caution

Ensure that the directory /var/log has appropriate access controls to limit access to the log files.
Edit lib/systemd/system/allinea-licenceserver.service in your Arm® Licence Server installation. Make sure that the Environment, ExecStart and User settings in the [Service] section are correct for your system.

Create a symbolic link to the systemd directory:

ln -s lib/systemd/system/allinea-licenceserver.service \
     /etc/systemd/system/

Enable Arm® Licence Server on future boots:
```
systemctl enable allinea-licenceserver
```
Start the Arm® Licence Server:
```
systemctl start allinea-licenceserver
```
Check that the Arm® Licence Server has started correctly:
```
systemctl status allinea-licenceserver
```