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Silently Activate GEOPAK Civil Engineering Suite

Don L

We're having an issue getting GEOPAK to silently activate against our local SELECTserver install. Here's the details:

SELECTserver: 9.0.0.113

MS: 08.11.09.459

GEOPAK: 08.11.09.493

Clients: Win7x64

We're using the LicenseCmdTool at the end of our MicroStation/GEOPAK SCCM push to set the license server information. In addition to that we're using the Bentley licensing GPO to set the same information via AD. MicroStation itself will activate silently against our local server and our users never see an activation wizard/dialog for this.

The issue we run into is that GEOPAK does not silently activate. When GEOPAK is activated in MicroStation it says "An installed CIVIL product is unlicensed and will start in 15 minute demo mode."  If the user runs the License Management Tool from the Utilities menu GEOPAK shows it's in 30 day trial mode. The users can activate against our local server without issues. The click "GEOPAK" in the License Management utility, they click the "Activate" button, and a few seconds later GEOPAK is activated.

This does not sound like a big issue but we have hundreds of users on a couple hundred machines. In addition to that we are using redirected Windows profiles so a user's registry/AppData do not follow them around. On top of that each user is not assigned a computer and usually uses a different computer each day. Each user will have to activate GEOPAK each time they want to use it every time they login which is far from an ideal situation.

Are there any silent means of activating GEOPAK against our local SELECTserver so we can avoid this issue?

  • 0

    It sounds like there may be an issue with the registry value being used for GEOPAK's activation. One of our GEOPAK specialists may be able to assist.

    Nicole Thomas

  • 0 Offline

    There are no silent means of activating Geopak..Once the user activates the first time and gets the license running, the program will auto activate on consequent sessions. You can set a config variable gpk_noautoactivate=1

    This will prevent Geopak from activating automatically.  If the user wants to use Geopak, he needs to go activate it.  It should remember all the licensing information (if not, make sure that the send logs command is performed in the license management tool.

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  • 0 in reply to Nico Roman

    I can't say I'm terribly pleased with this answer and I know my users won't be either. Basically this is Bentley saying they don't support mass deployment of their software within large organizations with a fluid user base/workstation model. My users will have to activate GEOPAK every time they want to use it since there's no vendor supported method for doing so at install time and manually activating hundreds of installs by hand is, to say the least, unfeasible for our deployment team.

    This isn't 1996 anymore and most medium to large organizations don't do software deployment by hand. We certainly don't give our users admin rights either. It's 2013 and we use an automated software deployment infrastructure that depends on a silent software deployment, including necessary activations. It would be fantastic if Bentley could accommodate their customers that have more than a handful of installations within their organization.

  • 0 Offline in reply to Nico Roman

    Unknown said:

    There are no silent means of activating Geopak..Once the user activates the first time and gets the license running, the program will auto activate on consequent sessions. You can set a config variable gpk_noautoactivate=1

    This will prevent Geopak from activating automatically.  If the user wants to use Geopak, he needs to go activate it.  It should remember all the licensing information (if not, make sure that the send logs command is performed in the license management tool.

     

    The issue here in anut shell is dealing with the Operating System and the actual user permissions. The short version isi this

     

    • We found that the user was using Group Policies (GPO) to push the server name and activation keys to the client
      Information is saved in the HK_LOCAL _MACHINE registry keys by the definitions in the GPO
    • When the user logs in the user information is kept in the HK_CURRENT_USER by design. The system is basically out of sync.
    • We Removed the registry information from the HK_CURRENT _USER keys and gave the user permissions to update its information in the
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > software > bentley registry location and activated the user's applications

    Now that the application and the user are looking and updateing the same location the activation informationbeing applied by the GPO is found and valid. Some general rules to follow are include in the link below.

    Activation of Client Side Products and Registry Basics
    http://communities.bentley.com/products/licensing/w/licensing__wiki/activation-of-client-side-products-and-registry-basics.aspx



    Answer Verified By: Michael Dougherty 

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