Displaying Encrypted/Readable License Manager Log File

The vusage utility displays a report of the information in an encrypted License Manager log file. The License Manager log file contains a record of the license transactions made by that License Manager.

The vusage utility displays the same information as the lsusage utility which is used at your customer’s site to monitor License Manager actions, however it is able to read and display data encrypted to level 3 or 4 in a License Manager log file, which lsusage cannot. You may also use the -d option to create a new, decrypted log file from the encrypted log file.

NOTE It is recommended not using the vusage or lsusage utilities to generate a report from a decrypted usage log file.

To use vusage, type the following at the system command prompt:

vusage [option]

where, one or more of the following options must be specified:

Option	Description
-l usage log file	Selects the License Manager log file to display. Must be specified. If this is the only option, the decrypted summary will be displayed on the screen.
-d log output file	Specifies the name of the output file to which the decrypted output will be written.
-c CSV-format file	Specifies the name of an output file to which the decrypted output will be written in Comma-Separated Values (CSV) format. NOTE This CSV file can be used with Microsoft Access to produce graphical reports. For more information, see the Sentinel RMS SDK System Administrator Help.
-f feature1[,version1]: feature2[,version2]	Specifies feature(s) and version(s) to be included in the output. Note that version is optional. If this option is not supplied, the output will contain all features and versions in the log file.
-m start month (MM)	Specifies the first month (1-12) of the time period to be included in the output. If not specified, then the -a option is ignored and January 1 is assumed for the start month and start day.
-a start day (DD)	Specifies the first day (1-31) of the month to be included in the output. For example, if you have specified March as the start month, specifying a start day of 1 means that the output will be for a time period beginning with March 1. If not included, and the -m option is included, a start day of 1 is assumed.
-y start year (YYYY)	Specifies the first year of the time period to be included in the output. Use four digits to specify the year. If not included, then -m and -a are ignored and the output begins with the first data in the file.
-M end month (MM)	Specifies the last month (1-12) of the time period to be included in the output. If not specified, then the -A option is ignored and the default value of December 31 is assumed.
-A end day (DD)	Specifies the last day (1-31) of the month to be included in the output. If not included, and the -M option is included, an end day of 31 is assumed.
-Y end year (YYYY)	Specifies the last year of the time period to be included in the output. Use four digits to specify the year. If not included, then -M and -A are ignored, and the output ends with the last data in the log file.
-h	Displays a list of all options that can be used.

NOTE vusage decrypts transactions for license codes set to all levels of encryption, and will warn if a record has been tampered with. For example, “On line number: 1ERROR: Line is tampered for session number 55.” Note that the log file may contain entries for other developers, however, vusage can only decrypt entries for your own licenses.

An Example

The vusage display looks something like this:

Application Usage Summary

--------------------------

%age denied	%age issued	Total Tokens Issued	%age Queued Granted	%age QRequest	Min. App. Duration (min)	Avg. App. Duration (min)	Max. App. Duration (Min)	Total Capacity Issued
For feature name: bounce, Version: Non-capacity
0.00	100.00	2	0.00	0.00	2.35	3.08	3.83	-
For feature name: bounce, Version: Capacity Non-pooled 4000
0.00	100.00	2	0.00	0.00	2.35	3.08	3.83	8000
Log report for sessions: 0

where,

Element	Description
Feature name/Version	Identifies the license for which this entry was made.
%age Denied	The percentage of requests for this license that were denied (usually because the hard limit of the license had already been reached), or if license queuing is enabled, this is the percentage of queued requests denied.
%age Issued	The percentage of requests for this license that were granted.
Total tokens Issued	The number of tokens for this license that were issued.
%age Queued granted	The percentage of queued license requests that were granted.
%age Qreq.	The percentage of license requests that were placed in the license queue. (License requests are queued only if license queuing is enabled for this license.)
Min. App. Duration	The minimum number of minutes the application for this license was in use.
Avg. App. Duration	The average number of minutes the application for this license was in use.
Max. App. Duration	The maximum number of minutes the application for this license was in use.
Total Capacity Issued	The total amount of capacity issued, applicable only for capacity license.
LOG REPORT FOR Sessions: x	The session numbers for this License Manager that were logged in this file. The developer will want to track the session numbers when using encrypted log files for “pay per use” billing to verify that no session numbers were omitted by the end user.

Creating a Decrypted Log File

In addition to creating a report from an encrypted log file, you can also use the vusage -d option to create an decrypted version of that log file. (You might want to do this if you have your own utilities that create a report from a License Manager log file.)

A log file that contains encrypted entries might look like the following:

>Encryption Level 3

>Encryption Level 4

Encryption level 3

In this case, an encryption level of 3 has been used and all license transaction data appears in encrypted form:

# Startup Sentinel RMS License Manager v9.6.0.0028 Thu Jan 02 16:58:05 2020 1577964485 NOI-C8R14Q2 5620 10900

2 3 ODA= Thu Jan 02 16:58:18 2020 1577964498 F10 vV10 0 MQ== 0 10057112 NOI-C8R14Q2 9.6.0.0028 MQ== - - - - - - 0 - - - MA== 445102 MTU3ODQwOTYwMA==

2 3 ODA= Thu Jan 02 16:58:25 2020 1577964505 F10 vV10 2 MA== 7 10057112 NOI-C8R14Q2 9.6.0.0028 MQ== - - - - - - 0 - - - MQ== 760433 MTIwNTUzNQ==

# Shutdown Sentinel RMS License Manager v9.6.0.0028 Thu Jan 02 16:58:32 2020 1577964512 NOI-C8R14Q2 10900 Mg== 428873

You can use vusage to create a new log file in which the encrypted entries have been decrypted. For example, if the above log file is lserv.log, and you want to create an unencrypted version of it named lserv2.log, type:

vusage –l lserv.log -d lserv2.log

Here is what the converted log file looks like, with encrypted transaction data converted to plain text:

# Startup Sentinel RMS License Manager v9.6.0.0028 Thu Jan 02 16:58:05 2020 1577964485 NOI-C8R14Q2 5620 10900

1 1 ODA= Thu Jan 02 16:58:18 2020 1577964498 F10 vV10 0 - 0 1 0 10057112 NOI-C8R14Q2 9.6.0.0028 1 - - - - - - MA== 341642 MTU3ODMwNjE0MA==

1 1 ODA= Thu Jan 02 16:58:25 2020 1577964505 F10 vV10 0 - 2 0 7 10057112 NOI-C8R14Q2 9.6.0.0028 1 - - - - - - MQ== 1797125 MjEzODc2Nw==

# Shutdown Sentinel RMS License Manager v9.6.0.0028 Thu Jan 02 16:58:32 2020 1577964512 NOI-C8R14Q2 10900 Mg== 428873

Here is a brief summary of the log file elements:

Elements	Description
Server -lfe	Customer-defined log file encryption level as specified by the License Manager -lfe startup option.
License -lfe	Developer-defined log file encryption level as specified during license code generation. If this is non-zero, it overrides the server -lfe.
Date	The date the entry was made, in the format: Day-of-week Month Day Time (hh:mm:ss) Year
Time-stamp	The time stamp of the entry.
Feature	Name of the feature.
Ver	Version of the feature.
Capacity flag	Possible values: 0 - Capacity licensing is not used by the software vendor 1 - Non-pooled capacity licensing is used by the software vendor 2 - Pooled capacity licensing is used by the software vendor
License capacity	When capacity licensing is used by the software vendor, this field contains license capacity. Otherwise, it contains a hyphen.
Trans	The transaction type, 0 indicates an issue, 1 a denial, and 2 a return.
Numkeys	The number of licenses in use after the current request/release.
Keylife	The time in seconds that the license was issued.
User	The user name of the application associated with the entry. This element can be logged anonymously if the anonymous logging option is set.
Host	The host name of the application associated with the entry. This element can be logged anonymously if the anonymous logging option is set.
LSver	The version of the Sentinel RMS License Manager.
Currency	The number of licenses handled during the transaction.
Comment	Log file comment.

If the Sentinel RMS log file contains characters that are not 7-bit ASCII (for example, if a user name contains multi-byte characters such as Japanese Kanji characters), those characters will not be viewable when looking directly at the log file. However, if you use the lsusage -c option to create CSV-format output from the log file, you will be able to view the multi-byte characters if you view the CSV-format file with an appropriate text editor on an operating system that displays the multi-byte language. Also, when anonymous usage logging option is enabled, that multi byte user and host names will be logged anonymously.

Encryption level 4

In this case, an encryption level of 4 has been used and all license transaction data appears in encrypted form:

# Startup Sentineaur mal RMS Development Kit v7.00 Fri Aug 13 17:33:37 1999 934590817 jsmith 141 4294489039

4 0 MTI1 RnJpIEF1ZyAxMyAxNzozMzozOSAxOTk5ICA5MzQ1OTA4MTkgOTkgdiAwIDEgMCBtcmVkZGluZyBtcmVkGluZyA3 LjAwIDEgLSAtIC0gLSAtIC0= MA== 1795899 OTM2Mzg2NzE4

4 0 MTI1 RnJpIEF1ZyAxMyAxNzozMzozOSAxOTk5ICA5MzQ1OTA4MTkgOTkgd iAyIDAgMCBtcmVkZGluZyBtcmVGluZyA3L jAwIDEgLSAtIC0gLSAtIC0= MQ== 2582281 NDM3ODE4MA==

# Shutdown Sentinel RMS Development Kit v7.00 Fri Aug 13 17:33:40 1999 934590820 jsmith 4294489039 Mg== 3305931

vusage –l lserv.log -d lserv2.log

Here is what the converted log file looks like, with encrypted transaction data converted to plain text:

# Startup Sentinel RMS Development Kit v7.00 Fri Aug 13 17:33:37 1999 934590817 jsmith 141 4294489039

1 1 MA== Fri Aug 13 17:33:39 1999 934590819 99 v 0 1 0 jsmith jsmith 7.00 1 - - - - - - MA== 764248 OTM1MzU1MDY3

1 1 MA== Fri Aug 13 17:33:39 1999 934590819 99 v 2 0 0 jsmith jsmith 7.00 1 - - - - - - MQ== 914504 MTY3ODc1Mg==

# Shutdown Sentinel RMS Development Kit v7.00 Fri Aug 13 17:33:40 1999 934590820 jsmith 4294489039 Mg== 3305931

Here is a brief summary of the log file elements:

Elements	Description
Server -lfe	Customer-defined log file encryption level as specified by the License Manager -lfe startup option.
License -lfe	Developer-defined log file encryption level as specified during license code generation. If this is non-zero, it overrides the server -lfe.
Date	The date the entry was made, in the format: Day-of-week Month Day Time (hh:mm:ss) Year
Time-stamp	The time stamp of the entry.
Feature	Name of the feature.
Ver	Version of the feature.
Trans	The transaction type. 0 indicates an issue, 1 a denial, and 2 a return.
Numkeys	The number of licenses in use after the current request/release.
Keylife	The time in seconds that the license was issued.
User	The user name of the application associated with the entry. This element can be logged anonymously if the anonymous logging option is set.
Host	The host name of the application associated with the entry. This element can be logged anonymously if the anonymous logging option is set.
LSver	The version of the Sentinel RMS License Manager.
Currency	The number of licenses handled during the transaction.
Comment	Log file comment.