6.2.1.1 RLM startup options

The RLM command is:

% rlm [-c <license_file>] [-dat] [-dlog [+]logfile] [-info]
      [-l] [-noudp] [-nows | -ws port] [-x [rlmdown|rlmremove]]
      [-install_service] [-service_name <service_name>]
      [-v] [-user <username> -password <password>]
      [-isv_startup_delay <seconds>]
      [-verify] [-sslcert <certfile> -sslpriv <privkey>]

The -c license_file option specifies which license file to use. This option overrides the setting of the RLM_LICENSE environment variable. The license_file parameter can be a directory containing license files, all of which will be processed.

The -dat option specifies that license files should have the extension “.dat”, rather than “.lic”. If -dat is specified, the RLM server will search for all files ending in “.dat” instead of “.lic” as documented elsewhere.

The -dlog logfile specifies the pathname for the server debug log. If logfile is preceded by the '+' character, the logfile will be appended, otherwise it is overwritten. All ISV servers will write their output to the same logfile specified in the -dlog option.

The -info option causes RLM to print information about all copies of RLM that are running on this computer, including copies which have run in the prior 24 hours, then exit.

The -install_service and -service_name sname options are used to run the RLM server as a service under Windows. Optionally a username and password of a user account under which you wish to run the service may be specified, via the -user and -password arguments. See the description of running the RLM server as a service below.

Note:

Notes on using the -user and -password options:

Windows expects the username argument to be <domain><user>. To use the local system domain, specify ".<username>", e.g., ".joe". Without the "." you will get a service creation failure.
In order to run a service, the account specified by the -user argument must have the "Log on as a Service" property set. Details on how to set that property on an account can be found here:
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/scsm/enable-service-log-on-sm?view=sc-sm-2025

The -isv_startup_delay seconds option specifies that when running as a Windows service, RLM should delay seconds seconds before starting up the ISV servers. If not specified, there is no delay. This is useful if a license file specifies a hostid of type rlmid1 or rlmid2 (hardware keys), the server is started at system boot time, and the key driver is not yet started at the time the ISV server needs to read it.

The -l switch causes rlm to only process command-line utilities from the local host (v12.1+).

The -nows and -ws port options control the operation of the embedded Web Server. The -nows option instructs the RLM server to not start the embedded web server. The -ws port option instructs the rlm server to use port as the port number for the web server.

The -noudp option tells RLM to not bind the UDP port (5053) used for replying to broadcast messages from clients in RLM v10.0 and later. This option is not used by Microchip.

The -v option causes RLM to print its version and exit.

The -verify option will cause RLM to start all ISV servers to verify their licenses, then all servers will exit.

The -x [rlmdown | rlmremove] option controls whether the rlmdown and/or rlmremove commands will be processed by the server. Specifying only -x will disable both commands. Specifying either command name after the -x will disable just that command.

The -sslcert certfile and -sslpriv privkey options together instruct the RLM web server to use HTTPS using the SSL certificate certfile and SSL private key privkey. These options first appeared in RLM v15.1

Note: These options can appear in any order on the command line.

If you want to generate a report log file, specify this on an ISV-by-ISV basis in the individual ISV's options file. See the description of the REPORTLOG line in 6.2.7 The ISV Options File for more information.

Attention: If the RLM server cannot bind the web server port (5054 by default), it will exit.

Also note that if there is not at least one license file with the current hostname (as returned by gethostname()), or “localhost”, a warning is generated.

If the ISV server pathname is incorrect in a license file which RLM is processing, RLM will attempt to start that ISV server using the path information in other license files, if present.

Starting in RLM v15.1, processing of -iai and -z flags has been removed. RLM will silently ignore these flags without giving an error message.