How the license server works 

The flexlm license server actually uses two daemons that work together. By default, Fotoware has set the lmgrd daemon to run on port 27000. This can be changed to any available port by following the instructions in the preceding topic. 

However, the second daemon, the vendor daemon, picks a random port on startup and may fail to connect to the license server if a firewall is blocking the access.

Below is a procedure for tying the vendor daemon to a single port to prevent it from selecting an arbitrary port.

Setting a fixed port for the vendor daemon 

A typical license file from Fotoware will look like this:

1  SERVER localhost 0A1B3C4D5E
2  VENDOR fotoware
3  FEATURE ColorFactoryBase fotoware 1.0 permanent 1 SIGN="11E0 CD95 4F5E \
4  8553 8624 265E 6B05 4FD3 C140 097D 6D00 96C3 4B17 E30E C32A \
5  038C CE0D 8C3A 1501 A513 33C1 912A 8CA7 E43C 669E 5A12 CEED \
6  250A 3AE2 4CC9"

The second line can be appended with a port number to control the port that the vendor daemon uses:

1  VENDOR fotoware port=1234

This way, the vendor daemon will be fixed to use a single port when connecting to the license server.

Then it's an easy job to open up two ports in your firewall to accommodate the lmgrd daemon and the vendor daemon.