NetHASP dongle licensing
A NetHASP dongle is a hardware device which you connect to either your machine or to a server to which you have network access, in order to enable license access by Orcina software such as OrcaFlex. Historically, all Orcina software which requires a license has been protected in this way; more recently, however, FlexNet software-based licensing was introduced as an alternative, and is available for OrcaFlex from version 11.0 onwards. If you would like to switch from dongle licenses to FlexNet, please contact us to arrange it.
Your dongle may be sent out to you with a license or licenses already active on it, or you may be sent an inactive dongle to which you will add licenses by applying update files with OrcaDongle.
Dongle device driver
In order for Orcina programs to connect to the dongle, a device driver for the dongle needs to be installed. This is done as part of the Orcina software installation (should you choose the local access dongle option in the installer) and so most users do not need to know anything about this device driver. However, if you are using a version of Windows that was released after your Orcina software then you may need to upgrade this device driver.
Drivers and other software can be obtained from the Thales (Sentinel) website. The latest driver package omits legacy files which are necessary for the dongle to function. We therefore require specifically version 8.31 of the command line installer. This link to the Thales (Sentinel) website should take you directly to the required download, which has Thales knowledge base article number KB0025777.
Once the installer is downloaded and extracted to a suitable working folder, you should have access to the executable haspdinst.exe, administrator rights will be required to run this. Installation of the legacy drivers is requested with -ld command line parameter, the full command line would be:
haspdinst.exe -i -fi -ld -kp -fss
Where these command line options represent an installation action (-i ) with other active installations ignored (-fi ), legacy drivers requested (-ld ) and the installer able to automatically stop a running license manager service (-fss ) or other processes accessing the driver (-kp ).
OrcaDongle
OrcaDongle is a utility program that is required to configure your Orcina dongle, for example to switch it from local to network access mode or to query the dongle information. You can download OrcaDongle here: OrcaDongle.zip
Extract the zip file to a temporary folder and then run the file OrcaDongle.msi to install OrcaDongle onto your machine. This will create a shortcut to OrcaDongle in your start menu under “Orcina Software”. The OrcaDongle documentation can be viewed online. Note, to access the dongle, OrcaDongle requires that the dongle device driver is present. Updates to the dongle using OrcaDongle can only be done in a local session on the computer to which the dongle is connected, it cannot be done remotely.
Network dongle support
Full details on setting up a dongle for use over a network are in the Networked Dongles topic of the OrcaDongle documentation. To use a dongle in this way, you will need a license manager and configuration file. The license manager must run on a Windows machine, which hosts the dongle. OrcaFlex discovers the license manager using a configuration file on the user’s computer. The OrcaFlex installation must have a license file for the dongle in the OrcaFlex installation folder. Note, the license manager is not tested or supported for use on a virtual machine. If you wish to use this configuration then we recommend testing first and having a back physical server option available.
The license manager is installed by extracting and running the file in the following zip file: LMSetup.zip. The dongle device driver must also be installed (as above).
The license manager runs as a Windows service called ‘HASP Loader’, this listens on port 475 using TCP and UDP. If the connection to the license manager is over a WAN or VPN then you may need to explicitly open this port to allow access.
A configuration file template for a TCP/IP network is in the following zip file: Nethasp.zip
You will need to modify this to specify the IP address of your dongle server. In the template file modify the line ‘NH_SERVER_ADDR = xx.xx.xx.xx;’ to replace the ‘xx.xx.xx.xx’ placeholder with the IP address or hostname of your license server. Save the file as
nethasp.ini file in the folder ‘C:\ProgramData\Orcina\’ on each computer requiring access to OrcaFlex (C:\ProgramData\ is a hidden folder in Windows).
You may also download from here an installer for the Aladdin Monitor: aksmon32-setup.zip
This program will give some diagnostic information on the HASP license manager and dongle on your network and instantaneous details of which machines have claimed which licenses. When run on a computer on the same network, the license manager is detected by broadcast and displayed in a sidebar. OrcaFlex is listed as ‘Program 26’ in a program table, and a login table lists any IP addresses holding licenses.
Alternatively, you can use our own licence monitor which takes some more configuration but can provide more usage information.