Licence
Activate your licence, and what to do when it refuses.
Activation ties one machine to one seat of your licence. It happens during the installation, and it can be done again later from Settings.
What activation actually does
Three things, in order. The machine asks the licence server for a seat. The server answers with a credential belonging to this machine and no other. The machine writes the repository of your edition and that credential, then installs the edition packages.
After that, every install and every update of a paid package presents the credential and the server decides. Nothing on the machine can grant access the server has not granted, which is also why nobody can take your machine away from you at a distance.
During the installation
- Sign in with your Cyclop account on the Set up your PC screen
- Pick your edition on the screen after it
- Finish the installation and restart
- On the first real boot, once the network is up, the edition packages install on their own
The edition packages install on the first boot rather than during the installation, because the installer works inside a system that usually cannot resolve a name yet. If that first boot has no network, it tries again.
Later, from the machine
Settings, then Accounts, then Subscription. The page shows the licence the key belongs to, asked of the server every time it opens rather than remembered, because a licence renewed or released since the install would leave anything stored on the machine wrong.
- Settings, Accounts, Subscription
- Press Activate this computer
What you should see when it worked
The Subscription page names your edition and a renewal date, and the seat counter moves up by one. In your account on the website, the machine appears in the list under its own name.
The red message: no seat left
Your licence covers a number of machines and they are all taken. The installer says so in red on the account screen and carries on installing Community, which is the right behaviour: you end up with a working computer, not a failed installation.
The refusal names the machine on your licence that has been quiet the longest, with the date it was last heard from. That is almost always the one to free.
- Open your account on cyclop-tech.com, License and devices
- Find the machine you no longer use
- Deactivate it. Your password is asked, and your two-factor code if you use one
- Back on the new machine: Settings, Accounts, Subscription, Activate this computer
A machine with no network
There is no offline activation. The account screen and the activation both talk to our server by design: a seat that could be taken without asking anybody would not be a seat.
A machine with no network still installs, and it installs Community. Connect it later and activate from Settings. Nothing is lost, and you do not reinstall.
The other refusals, and what each one means
- Wrong credentials: the account is the one on cyclop-tech.com, not the password of the computer. They are two different passwords and changing one never changes the other.
- The licence has expired or was cancelled: renew it from your account, then activate again.
- Nothing visible happened: the installer writes down the reason it was refused, and Settings shows it on the Cyclop Account page. Look there before guessing.
It says it worked, and a paid application is still missing
The repository caches its answer for about ten minutes. A licence just repaired can take that long to be seen by the machine, and that delay is on purpose: without it, every update on every machine would query the licence database twice.
After that, Settings, Updates, check for updates.
