Can the Qlab licence be applied to all user accounts of a single computer?

[zestie]

We have one Qlab Pro Bundle licence at our small theatre. Every so often we have visiting performances where all our technical equipment is made available to the visitors, Qlab included. Since I don't want outsiders potentially messing with our stuff, I hit upon the idea to create a guest account for these visiting performances. However, it seems the Qlab licence only works for the user account it was originally installed on. Is there a way around this so the Pro licence can be activated for all user accounts on the same computer? 

[Dominic Hargreaves]

I didn't find a way of making the licence work on all accounts, but you
can copy the licence file manually to the guest account and import it into
QLab there without any problems. I guess it would be wise to delete
the licence file afterwards to discourage "borrowing"...

Cheers,
Dominic.

--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)

[Paul Gotch]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 10:45:30AM +0000, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 01:47:40AM -0800, zestie wrote:
> > We have one Qlab Pro Bundle licence at our small theatre. Every so often we
> > have visiting performances where all our technical equipment is made
> > available to the visitors, Qlab included. Since I don't want outsiders
> > potentially messing with our stuff, I hit upon the idea to create a guest
> > account for these visiting performances. However, it seems the Qlab licence
> > only works for the user account it was originally installed on. Is there a
> > way around this so the Pro licence can be activated for all user accounts
> > on the same computer?
>
> I didn't find a way of making the licence work on all accounts, but you
> can copy the licence file manually to the guest account and import it into
> QLab there without any problems. I guess it would be wise to delete
> the licence file afterwards to discourage "borrowing"...

If you originally installed the license on a limited account then it
will only work in that account. In order for the license to work across
all accounts you must have installed the license from an account which
has Administrative privileges.

The easiest thing to do is to de-authorise and remove the license then
re-ad and re-authorise it from ad admin account. It should then work
across all users on the machine.

-p
--
Paul Gotch
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[zestie]

Dominic: 

If I copy the licence to the guest account, am I not using up one of the 3 installations allowed for the licence? 

Paul: 

The licence was installed using an Administrator account. For obvious reasons I don't want to grant administrative privileges to the guest account though. It is a Standard account. 

Hordur

[Paul Gotch]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 03:04:14AM -0800, zestie wrote:
> Dominic:
> If I copy the licence to the guest account, am I not using up one of the 3
> installations allowed for the licence?

The license allows:
- Main machine
- Backup machine
- Designer's Machine/Work From Home Machine

It's the number of authorisations vs de-authorisations which count
contact sup...@figure53.com for help.

> Paul:
> The licence was installed using an Administrator account. For obvious
> reasons I don't want to grant administrative privileges to the guest
> account though. It is a Standard account.

Again contact sup...@figure53.com for help I have machines which have
have licenses installed on them which work across all accounts both
administrative and standard, licenses are meant to be machine wide.

[zestie]

I have just sent a query to support at figure53. I'll post a reply here. 

Thanks for the help. 

Hordur

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:29:57AM +0000, Paul Gotch wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 03:04:14AM -0800, zestie wrote:
> > Dominic:
> > If I copy the licence to the guest account, am I not using up one of the 3
> > installations allowed for the licence?
>
> The license allows:
> - Main machine
> - Backup machine
> - Designer's Machine/Work From Home Machine
>
> It's the number of authorisations vs de-authorisations which count
> contact sup...@figure53.com for help.

That's interesting; I wasn't aware that the count was enforced in that
way. This means that I may well be using up two of my three already
on a single machine. At least I'll have that in my mind if I ever do
need to licence three separate machines at once :)

> > Paul:
> > The licence was installed using an Administrator account. For obvious
> > reasons I don't want to grant administrative privileges to the guest
> > account though. It is a Standard account.
>
> Again contact sup...@figure53.com for help I have machines which have
> have licenses installed on them which work across all accounts both
> administrative and standard, licenses are meant to be machine wide.

I'm 90% sure this didn't work for me - I installed the licence
initially on an Administrator account and QLab didn't believe it was
licensed when run on the Standard operator account, but would have
to check to be sure.

[Dave "luckydave" Memory]

To clarify: One standard (not a rental) QLab license can be installed on up to three computers, with one for the live show, one for its redundant backup, and one for the designer to install on their own machine, to work off-site. QLab licenses are authorized to a computer, not to an account on a computer. When a QLab license is installed by an administrator account, that license should be available to all accounts on that computer. Sometimes, that doesn't work. If it doesn't work, you could either install the license and authorize it from another account, which won't count against your total authorizations, as it's still the same computer, or you can write to us at sup...@figure53.com, and we'll get you a utility tool to activate the license for all accounts.

Thanks,

luckydave

-- 

luck...@figure53.com

[Christopher Ashworth]

On Jan 11, 2013, at 7:45 AM, Dominic Hargreaves <d...@earth.li> wrote:
>>
>> It's the number of authorisations vs de-authorisations which count
>> contact sup...@figure53.com for help.
>
> That's interesting; I wasn't aware that the count was enforced in that
> way.

To clarify: it is counted based on machine serial number, so it's the number of authorizations for unique computers.

Also, in general, we've tried to make the authorization system forgiving. We don't want licensing issues to interfere with a show.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, our authorization system is designed with the idea that a human at Figure 53 is part of the process of deciding if a license is being abused. We will generally try to reach out to you if it appears a license is being installed beyond the limits of the EULA.

When in doubt, drop us a line and we'll do our best to help.

-C

[Jeremy Lee]

True Guest accounts are tricky- everything in their home folder will be deleted at logout. You want to try just making another account instead.

Jeremy Lee
- A thumb is a terrible speller. Please forgive my trespasses.

> --
> Change your preferences or unsubscribe here:
> http://groups.google.com/group/qlab
>
> Follow Figure 53 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Figure53

[Lucas Krech]

Rather than a guest account why not just make a regular account and use parental controls to limit their access to the applications? The parental controls are imperfect but very useful for rental accounts.

-L

Lucas Benjaminh Krech

Lighting and Video Artist

www.lucaskrech.com

646.263.8439

Vimeo.com/LucasKrech

Twitter: lucaskrech

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Where there is light, there is hope."

~John Alton

[zestie]

A slight misunderstanding, Jeremy. 

When I write guest account I don't mean in the OSX sense of a temporary Guest account. Rather I'm talking about a Standard user account for visiting groups, i.e. our guests. Using an OSX Guest account would be disastrous as you point out. 

Re the topic of this duscussion, I have receved a tool from luckydave at Figure53 that is supposed to make sure the licence is applied across all user accounts on the computer.  I'll post the results here. 

Hordur

[zestie]

See my reply to Jeremy above.

H. 

[Jeremy Lee]

That makes better sense!

How often do you do stuff like this? I know I'm often frustrated by non-admin accounts when I'm a visiting designer. I like to set up screen sharing/ file sharing/ networking/ drive spin-down and the rest myself. If I don't have a password I cant do that. 

Why not just get everything set up the way you like it, make a CCC clone of the boot drive, leave the Mac completely open, and restore to your preferred state after the guest leaves?

Jeremy Lee

- A thumb is a terrible speller. Please forgive my trespasses.

[zestie]

Luckydave provided a utility to fix the licensing issue. It worked like a charm. 

To answer you question Jeremy, we have 3-4 visiting groups per year at our theatre. It worried me to give them access to our own account and furthermore I don't want to give them Admin access to the computer. If they need anything over the ordinary it is fairly easy to set up extra services such as screen sharing. Seems my problem is solved now without compromising security and I'm very happy about it. 

Hörður