Install a node-locked license#

Note

This page only applies to commercial use of ACEMD. Non-commercial use is free and does not require a license file or server — see License options.

You will learn: how to install a commercial ACEMD node-locked license on a single workstation.

Prerequisites:

  • A commercial license purchased from Acellera. The license is issued as a license.dat file tied to the MAC address you provided at purchase.

For an overview of license types (non-commercial, node-locked, floating, cloud), see License options.

Step 1 — Place the license file#

At startup ACEMD checks whether any of these env vars are defined or whether any of these files exist; if any of them is present it invokes the bundled license-checker binary, which performs the actual validation:

  • Env var $ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE (or the British-spelling $ACELLERA_LICENCE_FILE).

  • /opt/acellera/license.dat or /opt/acellera/licence.dat — system-wide.

  • ~/.acellera/license.dat or ~/.acellera/licence.dat — per-user.

Both spellings are accepted at each location. Which license actually gets used when several are present is decided by the bundled checker, not by ACEMD itself. The easiest path is to drop the file in your home directory:

mkdir -p ~/.acellera
cp license.dat ~/.acellera/license.dat

For a multi-user host, put it in /opt/acellera/license.dat (readable by all ACEMD users).

Step 2 — (Optional) Point at a custom location with an env var#

If the license lives somewhere else:

export ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE=/path/to/license.dat

Add the line to your shell rc (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, …) so it survives new shells.

Verify it’s set:

env | grep ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE

Step 3 — Verify#

acemd --license

This runs the bundled license checker and prints its report, which tells you whether a valid license was found. Note that acemd --license always exits with status 0 regardless of the result — read the printed output to confirm the install rather than checking the exit code.

Gotchas#

  • The license is bound to the MAC address of the issuing machine. Moving license.dat to a different host fails the validation.

  • ACEMD also recognises the British spelling ACELLERA_LICENCE_FILE for backward compatibility, but the American spelling is preferred for new installations.

See also#