sentinel

Owned by Dan Sturtevant
Nov 24, 2021
2 min read

Overview

THALES Sentinel is a commercial licensing system used by Silverthread to supply licensing functionality to systems running in offline airgapped environments. The commands herein provide all necessary functionality to facilitate activation of offline licenses.

Activation Scenarios

Single Machine

For activation with a single machine, only the C2V/V2C exchange specified in the sentinel command help text must be performed. Note that the machine must either be Internet connected, or the capability to transfer data from the airgapped machine to a non-airgapped Internet-connected machine must be in place. Silverthread makes no recommendation as to a particular data transfer method. Both V2C and C2V files are generally small enough (typically less than 1MiB) to fit on any reasonable data transfer mechanism.

Network License

A Network License is used to serve the scenario in which multiple machines connected to a network subnet shall share a license to use the CodeMRI® Platform and/or CodeMRI® Web On-Premise. This situation requires the installation of the Sentinel HASP Runtime on the machine designated to be the license server. Silverthread will provide links to the HASP Runtime along with your product key when network licensing is desired as part of the purchase contract.

Multiple utilities are provided, depending on your chosen platform:

  • If the license server machine is running Windows, THALES offers a utility by the name of Remote Update System (aka RUS) which provides a GUI for the management of licenses and activation. We recommend the use of that utility, which can be obtained by logging into your customer portal using your product key. There is no need to install the CodeMRI® Platform on this machine.

  • If the license server machine is running Linux, THALES offers no such utility. Please install the CodeMRI® Platform on the license server, and use the cmri sentinel series of commands as described in the documents herein for offline licensing.

Activation need only be performed on the license server, machines connected to the network shall discover and use the licenses contained within the license server.

Offline Activation Workflow

Offline license activation consists of a multi-step process:

  1. Obtain a product key from Silverthread. Typically these are supplied at execution of a purchase contract, when offline licensing is a requirement for compliance.

  2. Run cmri sentinel generate-c2v –out fingerprint.c2v to generate a C2V for your machine. See the help for generate-c2v for information about different licensing scenarios.

  3. Transfer the C2V file to a machine with Internet access using your data transfer method of choice.

  4. Log into your customer portal at https://silverthread.sentinelcloud.com/ems/customerLogin.ws using your product key.

  5. Click Offline Activation on the top bar.

  6. Upload the C2V file you generated for your machine using the “Upload C2V” form.

  7. Download the generated V2C file.

  8. Using your preferred data transfer method, transfer the V2C file from the Internet connected machine to the airgapped machine you wish to activate.

  9. Run cmri sentinel apply-v2c -f /path/to/longnumber.v2c

After completion of this process, the new license will be active on the target machine.

Sub-commands