Dynamic Entitlement tokens
Connecting to PFBucket
When PFTrack first runs on your client machine, it will attempt to connect to a PFBucketd server on your local network via a local area broadcast.
If a connection can be made automaticaly and an entitlement is available on the server to use, the PFBucketd server will return a dynamic entitlement token to PFTrack.
If no connection can be made (for example, due to network configuration restrictions), PFTrack will wait a short while to see if any further communication is received:
If no PFBucketd servers can be found, an error window will appear:
This error window indicates that no PFBucketd servers responded to the broadcast. It also displays your PFHostID, which is an identifier unique to your client workstation.
Further details on network configuration for the PFBucketd server are available here.
Manual connection
If you have installed PFBucketd on your network but the local area broadcast did not succeed, you can tell PFTrack the IP address of your PFBucketd server in two ways: either by creating an environment variable, or a license.txt file.
Environment variable
To tell your client machine the location of your PFBucketd server, use the environment variable PIXELFARM_PFBUCKETD_SERVER.
This should be set with the IP address (and optional port number) for your PFBucketd server:
XXX.XXX.XX.XX:8070
where XXX.XXX.XX.XX is the IPV4 address of your PFBucketd server.
For example, if the local IP address of your server is 192.168.0.8 and you were using the default port number of 8070, you would set the PIXELFARM_PFBUCKETD_SERVER environment variable to:
192.168.0.8:8070
Creating a license file
Alternatively, you can also specify the IP address and port number by creating a license.txt file on your client machine at:
/Applications/The Pixel Farm/license.txt
containing the SERVER command and the IP address of your PFBucketd server as follows:
SERVER XXX.XXX.XX.XX:8070
where XXX.XXX.XX.XX is the IPV4 address of your PFBucketd server.
After creating your license.txt file, launch PFTrack again and it will attempt to communicate directly with the PFBucketd server at the IP address you have specified.
Receiving Entitlement Tokens
Once a connection to your PFBucketd server has been established, PFTrack will ask for an entitlement token. If one is available on your server, PFTrack will launch and you can get working straight away.
If no entitlement token is received, PFTrack will display an information window listing the entitlements available on the server, and indicate why PFTrack is unable to run:
In this example, PFTrack connected to a PFBucketd server called 'MyServer' at the IP address '192.168.0.8', The server holds a single PFTrack entitlement, but that entitlement is currenty in use on another machine. This corresponds to the entitlement error message 'Too many entitlements requested'.
In the following example, an entitlement is available on the server, but its maintenance subscription expired before this build PFTrack of was released:
If this error message occurs even though a maintenance subscription has been purchased, please ensure the entitlements activated on your PFBucketd server are up-to-date. Further information about entitlement management in PFBucket can be found here.
Please note: the functionality displayed here in the entitlement error window may not be available when using older versions of the PFBucketd entitlement server. Please ensure you are using the latest available version of the PFBucket desktop app and the PFBucketd server daemon.