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FAQ

General

Why LiMon?

Because most license-monitoring products drift toward one of two bad extremes: stripped-down tools that leave you doing too much manual work, or sprawling enterprise suites that charge heavily for layers of complexity most teams never asked for.

LiMon is deliberately positioned in the middle. It is modern, fast to deploy, and focused on the operational questions that actually matter: what is being used, what is being wasted, where the bottlenecks are, and what deserves action.

That also means we are selective. LiMon is not trying to expose every knob, every integration, and every obscure workflow ever invented. It is built to cover the core monitoring and analytics needs well, stay understandable, and remain fairly priced.

What license managers does LiMon support?

LiMon currently supports FlexLM (Flexera), RLM (Reprise), LM-X (X-Formation), and DSLS (Dassault Systemes). It uses the vendor-provided binaries that you place in /opt/limon/tools.

Does LiMon require internet access?

No. LiMon is designed to run fully on-premises. It does not need internet access to monitor license servers, serve the web interface, or generate reports.

The only exception is for optional features available with the Professional platform such as webhooks and Entra integration. If you configure Slack or Microsoft Teams webhooks, the LiMon host needs outbound HTTPS access on port 443 to reach those services. No inbound internet access is required.

Depending on your firewall policy, your network team may need to allow outbound traffic to:

  • Slack: *.slack.com and, in practice, https://hooks.slack.com/*
  • Microsoft Teams:
  • *.webhook.office.com for legacy O365 connectors
  • *.logic.azure.com for newer Power Automate based workflows

Note: LiMon uses standard Incoming Webhooks, meaning it only makes simple, one-way outbound POST requests to a cryptographically secure URL. It does not require you to provide service accounts, OAuth logins, or passwords for these external platforms.

Why don't you support X license server?

The legacy license monitoring market is filled with incredibly expensive tools that justify their astronomical price tags by supporting dozens of obscure, legacy license managers. Every new integration requires dedicated engineering resources to build, test, and maintain. By intentionally limiting our scope to the industry standards, we keep our development overhead low and pass those savings directly to you. We aim to provide highly reliable, premium analytics for the tools you actually use, without charging you for enterprise bloat. That said if the demand for supporting a new license manager is there we will listen.

Why don't you support X feature?

For the same reason we avoid unnecessary license-manager sprawl: every feature adds UI complexity, operational overhead, and support surface area. We are careful about what makes it onto the roadmap.

Our goal is not to build the biggest license-monitoring suite on the market. Our goal is to build the one that gives teams clear operational visibility, solid analytics, and a straightforward deployment experience without demanding contracting professional services to install it and a consulting engagement to use it.

We still listen closely to feedback. If a request aligns with the product's core direction and solves a broad, recurring customer problem, it has a credible path onto the roadmap.

Does LiMon install agents on endpoints?

No. LiMon talks directly to your license servers over the network. Nothing is installed on end-user workstations or on the monitored license-server hosts.

Installation

What are the system requirements?

The exact footprint depends on how many servers you monitor and how much activity they generate, but LiMon can start comfortably on modest infrastructure. As a practical baseline, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk is enough for smaller deployments.

For native package deployments, you need:

  • a modern Linux distribution with systemd
  • a supported Python runtime plus Python virtual-environment support (venv) and pip
  • an existing MariaDB or MySQL server

LiMon ships prebuilt offline wheels for Python 3.9, 3.11, and 3.12. If you use another Python version, the installer will tell you which modules must be installed with pip first.

For Docker deployments, you need:

  • Docker Engine 20.10+
  • Docker Compose v2

For any deployment model, the LiMon host must be able to reach your license-server ports over the network using the same connectivity model your users already rely on.

How do I update LiMon?

LiMon upgrades are designed to be in-place. In normal cases you keep your existing data and configuration, replace only the application package or container bundle, and let the application apply any required schema migrations on startup.

Before upgrading, back up:

  • your database
  • /opt/limon/config
  • /opt/limon/tools or the equivalent mounted ./tools directory in Docker
  • /opt/limon/reports if you want to retain generated reports

Upgrading from Free to Paid

For Docker installs, switch from docker-compose-free.yml to docker-compose-prod.yml while keeping the same database and config volumes. That preserves your existing setup and historical data. For native package installs replace the limon-free package with the paid package using your package manager, while keeping the existing database and /opt/limon data directories.

Once the paid edition is running, activate your evaluation or commercial license key in the UI. No reinstall and no manual data migration should be required.

Upgrading between Paid Versions

Upgrade in place using the newer package or Docker bundle:

  • Docker offline bundle installs: replace the bundle files and re-run the installer
  • Native package installs (.deb / .rpm): install the newer package over the existing one

Your database, configuration, license state, and reports remain in place.

Operation

How do I back up LiMon?

Treat the database as the primary system of record and back it up using the same process you already trust for your other production databases.

In addition, back up:

  • /opt/limon/config, which contains your installation settings
  • optionally /opt/limon/reports if you want to retain generated PDF reports
  • optionally your Docker .env file if you want to preserve compose-time settings such as ports or passwords

The application binaries themselves, and the vendor tools you supplied, can be restored from your original installation media and tool set.

Can I run LiMon on Windows?

LiMon is tested and supported on Linux. You may be able to run it through Docker Desktop on Windows or via WSL2 with Docker Engine, but that is outside our supported deployment model.

My license servers are on Windows. Will LiMon work?

Yes. The monitored server's operating system does not matter. LiMon queries license servers over the network using the vendor-provided tools, so Windows-hosted license servers are fine.

Can I change the default polling time?

Yes. The default polling interval is 10 minutes, which is intentionally conservative and works well for most environments.

You can tune it up or down, but we generally do not recommend going below 5 minutes. LiMon itself is fast; the real constraint is that many license managers can take a surprisingly long time to produce a full response. In some environments a single cycle can already consume one or two minutes.

The right interval depends on your server count, response times, and how much freshness you need. In Live View the System Metrics section helps you see how long real polling cycles are taking so you can tune from evidence instead of guesswork.

Can I kill idle sessions remotely?

No. LiMon is an observability and analysis tool. It does not terminate external processes or forcibly reclaim licenses from third-party applications.

Does LiMon hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar security certifications?

LiMon is a self-hosted, on-premises product, so the usual SaaS-hosting certifications do not map neatly to the delivery model. We do not host your deployment, process your production data, or require your environment to trust a vendor-operated cloud service.

Instead, the security model is built around a few practical principles:

  1. Air-gap capable by design. LiMon can run with no internet access, no telemetry, and no phone-home licensing.
  2. Inspectable core application code. The core polling engine and API are source-available under BUSL-1.1, so security teams can review what the software actually does.
  3. Offline license validation. Commercial license keys are verified locally using Ed25519 public-key cryptography.

Licensing

How does licensing work?

LiMon licensing has two parts:

  • a platform tier (Standard or Professional), which is perpetual
  • a subscription period, which typically runs for one year and controls subscription-only capabilities

In practice, that means the platform you purchase remains yours, while the active subscription governs things like advanced analytics, AD/LDAP integration, reports, email support, and product updates. Renewals are available in one, three, and five-year terms, with better pricing on longer commitments.

What happens when my subscription expires?

Your platform tier (Standard or Professional) keeps working. Real-time monitoring and the data you have already collected remain available.

What you lose is access to subscription-gated capabilities such as advanced analytics, AD/LDAP integration, report generation, email support, and ongoing platform updates until the subscription is renewed.

Can I try before I buy?

Yes. We offer a 60-day evaluation of the Professional platform, and we also offer a Free edition that supports up to 5 license servers with no time limit. Neither path requires a credit card. See limonops.com/pricing/ for details.

Troubleshooting

LiMon can't reach my license server

Start with basic network reachability from the LiMon host to the license server. Common ports include FlexLM 27000, RLM 5053, LM-X 6200, and DSLS 4085, but your actual environment may differ.

The dashboard shows no data

  • Verify the server configuration in config.yml for Free deployments or in the Admin UI for Standard and Professional deployments.
  • Check the poller logs with docker compose logs poller if you are running the Docker stack.
  • From the host running the monitor service, verify that the monitoring process is running and that the vendor tool can connect to the target server.
  • If you only see partial output from the vendor tool, it may be reaching the main license-manager port but failing to reach the vendor daemon port.

Some servers work fine but other servers of the same type produce wrong output

That usually comes down to version mismatches, timeout behavior, or vendor-specific format drift. License-manager vendors are not shy about changing output formats over time, so the first rule is simple: keep similar servers on similar versions whenever you can.

Things worth checking:

  • Make sure your vendor tool (lmutil, rlmutil, and so on) can correctly query and interpret the problematic server. In some cases you may need to upgrade or downgrade the tool to match the server more closely.
  • Check whether the server takes longer to respond than your configured full_data_timeout.
  • If the issue persists, active customers can send the vendor-tool output to support@limonops.com, or you can open a discussion in the GitHub community.

I can't see user details from Active Directory

  1. AD/LDAP integration requires an active subscription. If it has expired, renew it at limonops.com/pricing/.
  2. The LiMon administrator must configure the directory settings in the Admin UI.
  3. Directory enrichment is not real-time. LiMon handles AD synchronization as a scheduled nightly ETL job at 03:00, specifically to avoid being rude to your domain controllers.

That delayed sync model dramatically reduces directory query volume while still keeping user enrichment useful in practice.