Your licence

A cpleks licence is perpetual use plus one year of updates, for one server. It gates exactly one thing: the panel's own update button. Websites, mail, databases and the panel itself keep working with no licence, with an expired one, and while cpleks.com cannot be reached. Without a licence, or after the update year ends, the panel simply stops offering new versions.

Where it lives

The Licence card is on Settings, below the panel's version, and only an administrator sees it. Its pill says where the licence stands:

• NO LICENCE: nothing is activated on this server.
• ACTIVE: the note says until which day the panel receives every update published.
• UPDATE YEAR ENDED: everything keeps working; updates published after that day need a renewal.
• OTHER MACHINE, NOT VERIFIED, OLD KEY, RE-ISSUE WAITING, WITHDRAWN: each comes with one sentence saying what to do, usually to activate again or to check in.

Under the note, a line shows this server's machine code, the licence id, the last day of updates and when the server last checked in. The machine code is derived from the operating system's machine id: it stays the same when you reinstall cpleks, and changes when you reinstall the operating system.

Activate online

Your purchase email carries a licence key that starts with cplex-lic-1.. It names no machine yet; activating it binds it to this server.

1. Open Settings and scroll to Licence.
2. Paste the key into Licence key from your purchase email.
3. Press Activate. The panel sends this server's activation request and the key to cpleks.com, receives a key bound to this machine, and hands it to the server's privileged daemon, which checks it before keeping it.
4. A toast says Licence activated, and the pill turns to ACTIVE.

The key is not kept on the page after the press and never goes into an address. Treat it like a password until it is activated: anybody holding an unactivated key can activate it.

Activate a server that has no internet

1. On the Licence card, press This server has no internet. The card shows this server's activation request, one line you can select and copy.
2. On any device with internet, sign in to your account at cpleks.com, open the licence and choose Activate offline. Paste the activation request there; the page gives you a key issued for that server.
3. Back in the panel, paste it into Key issued for this server and press Install key. The toast says Licence installed.

Other ways to activate

• While installing: pass --license-key-file to the installer (Installing cpleks). If activation fails there, the install still finishes, unlicensed, and says how to finish from the panel.
• From SSH: cplexctl license reads keys on its standard input, never from the command line:

  sudo -u cplex /usr/local/sbin/cplexctl license activate < /root/cpleks.key
  sudo -u cplex /usr/local/sbin/cplexctl license request     # the offline activation request
  sudo -u cplex /usr/local/sbin/cplexctl license install < issued.key

Check-in and renewal

Once a day, together with the update check, the panel checks in with cpleks.com: it sends the licence id, this server's binding and machine code, and receives a signed status. That is how a renewal reaches the server without you doing anything, and how a refund or a move to another server reaches it too. Check in now on the Licence card does the same at once.

To install an update, the server needs a check-in from no more than 30 days before the date the update channel was signed. Both dates are signed, so the server's own clock does not matter. If cpleks.com cannot be reached for longer than that, updates wait; nothing else does.

To renew, buy another update year from your account at cpleks.com. The next check-in brings the new end date.

Move the licence to another server

1. On the old server, open Settings ▸ Licence and press Move this licence to another server….
2. Read the confirmation (the server keeps working and receives no updates until a licence is activated there again) and press Release it from this server.
3. If cpleks.com could be reached, the toast says the seat is free and you are done. If not, the card shows a Release code: enter it on your licence page at cpleks.com to free the seat. Until you do, the seat stays with the old server, which can activate again.
4. On the new server, activate with your licence key as above. Your account page at cpleks.com shows the key.