FAQ-O-Matic: I run a computer lab. How can I install Foundation for shared use?

General :
I run a computer lab. How can I install Foundation for shared use?

JBuilder's licensing information is stored in the user.home/.jbuilder directory. JBuilder is not available for site licensing, it's one license per user. However, since Foundation is free, simply have each student visit the Foundation Registration page and acquire a personal serial number and registration key.

Whatever type of network you use, the user.home directory must be writable, and preferably permanently available. Otherwise, the students will be forced to re-enter their registration information each time they visit the lab.

2001-Jan-24 5:02pm gyles19@visi.com

JBuilder's licensing scheme wasn't designed with multi-user student labs in mind.

JBuilder functions by finding the user's "home" directory, IE the JVM's concept of user.home. It creates a subdirectory under that home directory named .jbuilder4, and in there sticks a license.dat file.

If your network assigns each student a permanent username, and uses floating profiles which are saved and restored for each session, then each student needs their own JBuilder Foundation serial/reg key, and it should work okay.

If you aren't using floating profiles, then its getting stored on the specific machine the student is using, and if they move to a different machine they'll have to re-enter their serial/reg key on each new machine they visit.

If you don't save profiles between sessions, then your students have to re-enter the serial/reg key at the start of every session.

Also note, Windows 2000 introduces a new problem caused by the spaces embedded in the path where user profiles are stored. Its name escapes me, doh! but It's something like C:\Documents and Settings, and the profiles are under that, and Java apps in general doesn't handle spaces in paths.
2001-Mar-20 8:38pm gyles19@visi.com

One lab setup (a mix of Windows NT and 2000) installed JBuilder on C:\Jbuilder4 of each workstation, and the users had roaming profiles and home directories stored on a central server, mapped to drive U:. The JVM was getting an incorrect location for the profile, neither C: nor U:, but O: (and we never did figure out where that was coming from.) JBuilder could never find its license.dat file because users didn't have write permission on O:.

To get JBuilder running, we editted the user's JBuilder.config file to override the JVM's incorrect USER.HOME value. We added the line:

   vmparam -Duser.home=U:

This solved the problem.

A lab which wanted to store user profiles on a diskette could probably substitute A: for U: in the above line.

2001-Apr-03 2:53pm gyles19@visi.com

If all you want to do is move the .jbuilder folder itself, without altering the location of the user profile directory, use the line

  vmparam -Djbuilder.home=/path/to/.jbuilder

This moves JBuilder's properties folder without breaking the Desktop and User folders in the various File/Package choosers.
2001-Jun-15 8:05am gyles19@visi.com

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