Release and license information: adding or updating

License by standard users

The Perforce versioning service is licensed according to how many standard users it supports. There are three types of Perforce users: standard users, operator users, and service users.

• A standard user is a traditional user of Perforce.

  Standard users are the default, and each standard user consumes one Perforce license.

• An operator user is intended for human or automated system administrators.

  An operator user does not require a Perforce license.

• A service user is used for server-to-server authentication, whether in the context of remote depots (see Remote depots and distributed development) or in distributed environments.

  Service users do not require licenses, but are restricted to automated inter-server communication processes in replicated and multi-server environments.

Limits for unlicensed use depend on the release

License information

You can update an existing license file without stopping Perforce by using the p4 license command. See Adding or updating the license file.

• If the service is running, any user can use p4 info to view basic licensing information.

• Administrators can use p4 license -u to obtain more detailed information about how many users and files are in use.
• If the service is down, you can also obtain licensing information by running p4d -V from the server root directory where the license file resides, or by specifying the server root directory either on the command line (p4d -V -r server_root) or in the P4ROOT environment variable.

The server version is also displayed when you invoke p4d -V or p4 -V.

Adding or updating the license file

If your P4ROOT directory has a file named license, remove it.

License file in the P4ROOT directory

1. Copy the new license file over the existing license in the P4ROOT directory.
2. Determine whether you need to restart the server or not.

If you need to stop and restart the server ...

p4 -u User -p Server:Port admin stop

p4 license command

If a valid license file is already in the server root directory, as a super user, you can update it.

1. Display your current license with p4 license -o.

2. Install your new license with cat license.txt | p4 license -i or p4 license -i < license.txt.

   Tip

   If the server IP address or port number has changed in the license file, the p4 license command will not work. For example, if the IP address changed in the new license file, you will receive the following message: "Server license IPaddress changed, cannot proceed." In this case, stop and restart the server as detailed above.

   If p4 info does not indicate a license file update, stop and restart the server instance, then check the log file.

   Tip

   We recommend that you hide sensitive information from unauthorized users of p4 info by setting the dm.info.hide configurable.

Helix Visual Client (P4V) Administration tool

If the IP address or port number has not changed,

1. Launch P4V as a Helix server superuser.

2. Choose Tools > Administration.

3. On the Administration Home page, click Load new license file and browse to the license file on your local disk.

4. After successful installation, verify that the Administration tool Home page is updated with the new license information.