Creating a systemd-based service for FlexLM lmgrd license manager daemon

This is a short post on how to set up a systemd-based service to run FlexLM lmgrd. It is based on what others have written, and primarily based on Schrödinger, Inc.’s instructions.

The full write-up with the various files is at GitHub: https://github.com/prehensilecode/flexlm-systemd-service

Outline of the steps:

1. Create an unprivileged system user named flexlm to run the service
2. Create an lmgrd.service service definition file to go into /etc/systemd/system
3. Create a directory tree for the executables (lmgrd, lmutil, vendor daemons) and license files
4. Create a /var/log subdirectory

And that is it.

At my site, this is currently running on a RHEL 8.1 server, serving an Intel Parallel Studio XE license.

FlexLM and host names

If you ever get an error with lmstat like:

lmgrd is not running: License server machine is down or not responding. (-96,7:2 "No such file or directory")

but only from some machines outside your domain, check that the SERVER line in your license file specifies the FQDN of the license server. The default is to use just the hostname.

SERVER myserver.mydom.com XXXXXXXXXXXX NNNNN

Most search hits on that error message say things about firewalls.