My makerspace (ChattLab) has 10 computers in our PC lab, with 5 of those having LB licenses that we paid for. These aren’t connected to our laser cutter, but rather we use them for training and makers that want to prep their work prior to going to the cutter (where we have another computer with a 6th license).
We’re looking to set our computers up with one of our IT specialist makers that will be doing monthly refreshes of all installed software packages we like to have on each workstation. My concern is Lightburn. Questions include:
Is the license tied to the MAC ID and will work automatically if LB is installed?
or do we need to do the license management thing each month and un-install and re-apply?
If you are doing periodic wipes, that’s a fresh OS install, which will result in a different digital fingerprint, most likely. It’s possible that if they come from a master image the install might come out the same, but I feel that’s unlikely.
Before doing the wipe, go to each machine, run LB, go to Help > License Management and click ‘Deactivate’ to remove the key from that system, then re-license after imaging it. If you’re doing this every month, you’re going to run out of deactivations before long and we’d need to bump that limit.
A simpler solution might be to use floating seats, as those are only held for as long as they’re used. We generally don’t do float installs for fewer than 10 seats, but it’s not inconceivable that we’d make an exception.
Thanks for the quick response. Let me check with our IT guy on the specifics, it may not be a full OS wipe. We’ll see if there’s away to work around it. We don’t want to require any special accommodations. The licensing system works pretty well for us on the few times we’ve had to change machines and we don’t want to mess up a reliable system.
There are specific registry keys used by the license system to store the key info, but if those are wiped, you’d just re-key the machine and it should resolve to the same fingerprint. The fingerprint is a mix of mac address, computer name, hardware config, OS version, etc. There’s a threshold point where if enough of that changes it will treat it as a new computer.