Before You Begin

Please note: This article provides a means to enable a "non-standard" license location for Atalasoft license files. This is sometimes the best or possibly the only viable solution for a given deployment scenario, but support asks that you consider the suggested strategy outlined first...

The reason is this: when you set a custom license location in the registry, you now have a location unique to you - it could be anywhere on the system - but all our KB articles and defaults assume certain predictable known locations - our SDK works fine with this alt location, but very often customers forget about this once its set. and months or years later when updating or adding new licenses, they forget that they had a unique custom location set - and it causes a lot of head scratching when things are not where all our KB articles and support expects them.

Basically, setting a custom location works well, but can lead to later confusion when troubleshooting or making licensing changes - if you use this approach PLEASE carefully document it and ensure your team mentions you're using this any time you're contacting support regarding a licensing issue .. this can save countless hours of frustration on both your and our (support's) part.

​Recommended Solution

Support recommends: Use this option if at all possible

This solution works when you have a deployment process that deletes your web app directory and replaces it with files copied from another machine - a "blow out the old app and replace it" type deployment

The strategy is as follows:

For each server you're deploying to... create a local directory for the Atalasoft license files and subdirectory for specific version such as...

c:\AtalaLicenses\11.4\

Activate the licenses for this server for 11.2 and place them in there

Now, add a step to your deployment scripting so that after you deploy your app

for this example lets say it lives in

c:\inetpub\wwwroot\YourAppHere\

Optionally, before copying licenses search for and delete any Atalasoft.*.lic file in

c:\inetpub\wwwroot\YourAppHere\bin\

Now, copy the contents of

c:\AtalaLicenses\11.4\*.lic
to
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\YourAppHere\bin\

This ensures that you won't accidentally bring any licenses along for the ride from another machine and that the licenses are properly copied.

Custom License Registry Setting

Support suggests: Only use when you have no other option)

Our server licenses are per server - in some situations, you have a single shared application bin directory that multiple servers are using. This solution doesn't really lend itself to the previous option.

If you use this option please ensure you thoroughly document this and any time you contact Atalasoft support regarding licensing, be sure to mention you are using the custom license registry entries to help avoid any confusion.

You can configure your deployment to look in a custom folder for license files. Each major version can be made to point to a different path.

1. Open the registry with RegEdit
2. For x86 computers or x64 computers running x64 applications HKLM\Software\Atalasoft\DotImage\{version}\ key will be used.
   For example DotImage 11.4 would be HKLM\Software\Atalasoft\DotImage\11.4\
   
   For x64 computers troubleshooting x86 applications the HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Atalasoft\DotImage\{version}\ key will be used.
   For example DotImage 11.4 would be HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Atalasoft\DotImage\11.4\
   
   You may need to create both the Atalasoft and DotImage {version} keys. We recommend adding both unless you are certain which scenario you will encounter.
3. Right-click the {version} Key and choose [New->String Value] (will create a REG_SZ)
4. Name the string value "AssemblyBasePath"
5. Set the value of the string value to a full path of the folder you want to load the licenses from. It expects a full path on disk and will not create folders.

For example, you can use c:\licenses\11.4\ . Your application will need to have permissions to read from that location.

Original Article:

Q10235 - HOWTO: Configure your deployment to use Atalasoft .lic files in a custom location