SUMMARY
Due to the nature of RLM licensing and Flix, the Foundry License Utility cannot retrieve and display the number of client seats being taken at any given time, but only the number of servers. Because of this, it is challenging to know how many and which users are logged into Flix in a particular moment.
The licensing tool found in our public GitHub repository helps Flix admin users find this information, and it also gives them the ability to forcefully log out specific users, should it be necessary.
HOW TO USE THE LICENSE MANAGEMENT TOOL
You can download the license management tool from here:
https://github.com/TheFoundryVisionmongers/flix-scripts
Requirements:
Using the tool will not require a license seat to be free, so it can be used even after the maximum number is reached.
Only Flix admin users can use this tool.
You need to have Python 3 installed to use it.
You can run this from any machine that can connect to the Flix Server.
To check usage:
To check how many users are logged into Flix, run main.py, adding the mandatory --server --user and --password information, followed by --info. For example:
python3 main.py --server http://10.0.145.12:8080 --user admin --password admin --info
This will output something similar to:
You can see the number of seats currently in use and a list of users with their access keys expiration time. A valid access key does not inherently mean that the user is currently logged in.
Further information on why this is the case, what an access key is, and how it works can be found in the "What is an access key" section below.
To forcibly log a user out of Flix:
To log someone out and take back a license seat, --revoke can be used followed by the key that needs to be removed. For example, to log out user caterina.malfe:
python3 main.py --server http://10.0.145.12:8080 --user admin --password admin --revoke IZcyNDRSRWfNwOnr1eYX
WHAT IS AN ACCESS KEY
An access key is a string created for users at login time to grant that user access to Flix.
Access keys have a lifespan of 24 hours and they are stored in the database in the access_key table.
When a user logs out, the access key stays the same, because whether or not the key is expired, a new one will be created every time a logged-out user logs back into Flix.
A new key will not be created in cases where users close the Flix Client without logging out, and then open it before the key expires.
This is why an unexpired access key is not a direct sign that a specific user is still currently logged in and taking up a license seat. License seats in Flix are specifically taken up by an open Flix Client in use by someone with an unexpired access key.
FURTHER READING
If you would like to learn more about how Flix works on the back end, you can refer to our Flix Server Technical Overview.
We're sorry to hear that
Please tell us why