KB73058510: Licensing - Which network ports are used by the Esko licensing services

Summary

This article describes the network ports used by the different components of the Esko licensing services.

Overview

The following diagram represents a typical setup with a client application and a license server that provides network licenses to the client application.

License activation

If you want to activate an Esko license or sign in to use a named user subscription or dynamic subscription, you need internet access. The preferred method, online activation, uses a HTTPS connection to https://licensingservices.esko.com for online activation. For offline activation, you need access to http://activation.esko.com. The required ports are port 80 and port 443.

The easiest way to ensure that your product activation is successful is to allow connections to *.esko.com for ports 80 and 443 on your company firewall and/or your local firewall.

License usage

The license server

The license server itself consists of two processes:

lmgrd.exe, which uses and listens on a free port in the range of 27000 to 27009.
esko.exe, which uses and listens for connections on a dynamic port. The port used by esko.exe is known to lmgrd.exe
(legacy) barco.exe, which is similar to the esko.exe but for Esko legacy products.

It is possible to change the default ports used by lmgrd.exe and esko.exe, barco.exe. See Configuring static ports below.

The client applications

Esko client applications need access to both ports used by lmgrd.exe and esko.exe. The client application automatically scans ports in the range of 27000 to 27009, and retrieves the port number used by the esko.exe daemon.

Configuring static ports

If your environment or IT policy does not allow you to open up the required port ranges, you can also configure lmgrd.exe to listen for connections on a single, static port.
If your environment is running other 3rd party license servers (like EFI license server), also using the Flexera license services, you may need to change the ports used by the licensing system as well. Otherwise there may be a port clash and the Esko license server won't start correctly.

Locate the file %BG_DATA_SYSTEM_V010%\licenses_e.dat and open it in a text editor.
Change the contents of this file from
```
SERVER LICENSESERVER ANY
DAEMON esko
```
to
```
SERVER LICENSESERVER ANY 27005
VENDOR esko port=26999
DAEMON esko
```
where 27005 is the static lmgrd.exe port of your choice, and 26999 is the port of your choice for esko.exe daemon.
Save the file.

If your setup also supports the old barco vendor daemon, you need to execute the steps below as well. You can check if there is a barco daemon in place if you find the file %BG_DATA_SYSTEM_V010%\licenses_b.dat on your computer. You must not forget to execute these steps for a barco daemon otherwise the license server will not launch correctly again.

Check if your setup supports the barco vendor daemon. Locate the file %BG_DATA_SYSTEM_V010%\licenses_b.dat on your computer. If it is available proceed with step 2, else you can skip the steps 2 and 3.
Change the content of this file from
```
SERVER LICENSESERVER ANY
DAEMON barco
```
to
```
SERVER LICENSESERVER ANY 27005
VENDOR barco port=26998
DAEMON barco
```
where 27005 is the SAME static lmgrd.exe port you used in the chapter on the licenses_e.dat file and 26998 is the port of your choice for the barco daemon, which is DIFFERENT from the port you used for the esko vendor daemon in the licenses_e.dat file in the previous part.
Save the file.

It is strongly advised to use one of the default ports (27000 - 27009) for lmgrd.exe, and to configure a fixed port (e.g. 26999) for esko.exe. Using a different port (for example, 55000) requires special configuration on all client computers, and some older license clients do not support this configuration change.

Make sure your company firewall and local firewalls (both on the license server and on the client) are setup correctly (taking the above guidelines into account).

Article information
Applies to	Local License Manager all versions Network License Manager all versions
Created	5-Mar-13
Last revised	24 Nov 2022
Author	ELDE/BAV

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