USB Dongle

[Mike Corson]

Looking to build a NAS box at work. We have a program installed on multiple pc's that requires connecting to a USB license dongle on my machine for it to run. I also have files on a 2nd internal drive that the software needs access to. What I was looking to do is move all of the required shared files from my pc to a NAS as well as the USB dongle. The reason is that if I need to restart my pc and someone is running the software on another pc he has to stop what he's doing and wait for my pc to restart.

So is it possible for FreeNAS to act as a host for the USB dongle?

If not I'll have to build a windows box to host the dongle and stick it in a corner somewhere. Then I'll just store the required shared files on a NAS box. I have a few old windows towers that I planned to convert to NAS boxes so I have the hardware.

Thanks.

 

[DrKK]

Do you know anything more than "I have to have this USB dongle plugged into one of the Windows boxes for this to work?" The answer is almost assuredly that Windows is required. But I find it amusing that someone's licensing is based on a USB dongle. Is this common practice? I had no idea.

 

[leenux_tux]

As far as I know you can't use FreeNAS to "host" a USB dongle over the network. I am guessing this is some sort of licensing feature of the software you are using ?

Looking at what your trying to achieve, for me, the best option would be ..............

• Install Windows on one of the "old towers" you have in the office and dedicate this to being the USB host system. Once the OS is installed you don't even need to have a screen connected to it, just enable remote access to it and you can connect via RDP. TIP: Consider putting some large drives into this system (don't install the OS to these), keep them separate, explanation why below.
• The other "old tower" you have you can install FreeNAS to, providing the hardware is compatible. There are loads of configuration/deployment options out there, might be worth providing more information on this so the forum can help out.

The reason I mentioned putting large drives in the USB host machine is that you could actually use this machine as a backup server for the main FreeNAS box. No point in having it sat there just providing USB licensing services, use it to archive data !

Obviously there are other things you could do, these are just my ideas

 

[tvsjr]

Do you know anything more than "I have to have this USB dongle plugged into one of the Windows boxes for this to work?" The answer is almost assuredly that Windows is required. But I find it amusing that someone's licensing is based on a USB dongle. Is this common practice? I had no idea.

Yep, especially for high-dollar software. My wife's embroidery software uses one. Quite a lot of high end engineering software does too (we're talking stuff that can easily run north of 6 figures per named user).

For the OP, each dongle works slightly differently. There is some support for them in *nix - Synology actually has one such client built in. Some work with a network USB hub (Belkin makes one). And, while NOT advocating software piracy, there are options out there for certain dongles to replicate their functionality in software. You could always, hypothetically, Google the specific type of dongle to figure out if such an option exists.

 

[DrKK]

Yep, especially for high-dollar software. My wife's embroidery software uses one. Quite a lot of high end engineering software does too (we're talking stuff that can easily run north of 6 figures per named user).

For the OP, each dongle works slightly differently. There is some support for them in *nix - Synology actually has one such client built in. Some work with a network USB hub (Belkin makes one). And, while NOT advocating software piracy, there are options out there for certain dongles to replicate their functionality in software. You could always, hypothetically, Google the specific type of dongle to figure out if such an option exists.

Fascinating. Today, I learned.

 

[Mike Corson]

Do you know anything more than "I have to have this USB dongle plugged into one of the Windows boxes for this to work?" The answer is almost assuredly that Windows is required. But I find it amusing that someone's licensing is based on a USB dongle. Is this common practice? I had no idea.

I wouldn't say using a usb dongle for licensing is common, but we have 2 software packages here at work that control licensing thru a usb dongle. I have 3 licenses of the program I use on this dongle, which allows me to install Mastercam (the program I use) on every desktop here at work if I wanted and the dongle allows me to have up to 3 instances running at once so I can actually use it where ever I wanted to.

We have $15,000-$20,000 in the software I use, and roughly $8,000 in the other program we have that uses a dongle.

 

[Mike Corson]

As far as I know you can't use FreeNAS to "host" a USB dongle over the network. I am guessing this is some sort of licensing feature of the software you are using ?

Looking at what your trying to achieve, for me, the best option would be ..............

• Install Windows on one of the "old towers" you have in the office and dedicate this to being the USB host system. Once the OS is installed you don't even need to have a screen connected to it, just enable remote access to it and you can connect via RDP. TIP: Consider putting some large drives into this system (don't install the OS to these), keep them separate, explanation why below.
• The other "old tower" you have you can install FreeNAS to, providing the hardware is compatible. There are loads of configuration/deployment options out there, might be worth providing more information on this so the forum can help out.

The reason I mentioned putting large drives in the USB host machine is that you could actually use this machine as a backup server for the main FreeNAS box. No point in having it sat there just providing USB licensing services, use it to archive data !

Obviously there are other things you could do, these are just my ideas

Leenux, after doing more research and contemplating this weekend I'm thinking the same thing. I just have to find some remote corner where I can store the towers so they're out of the way and get them on the network.

As for the hardware for the FreeNAS box, most of the towers are old Dell boxes from WinXP days so quite old (maybe socket 478/775?).

I'm also thinking about just biting the bullet and buying a compact NAS enclosure and just supplying my own drives and loading FreeNAS, but I still have to do some research on that as well.

I don't know if dongle supports running on *nix, but I'm not going down that road.

New it was a longshot on FreeNAS being able to do what I wanted, but sometimes you get lucky. Thanks for all the info guy.

 

[danb35]

As for the hardware for the FreeNAS box, most of the towers are old Dell boxes from WinXP days so quite old (maybe socket 478/775?).

You really should consider something a bit more modern--it'll save you kilowatts at the least. The current bang-for-buck leader, AFAIK, is the HP Proliant ML10 at $180. Add an 8 GB stick of RAM and your existing drives, and you'll have a decent piece of modern server-grade kit.

 

[Mike Corson]

You really should consider something a bit more modern--it'll save you kilowatts at the least. The current bang-for-buck leader, AFAIK, is the HP Proliant ML10 at $180. Add an 8 GB stick of RAM and your existing drives, and you'll have a decent piece of modern server-grade kit.

Was hoping to do this as cheap as possible because I wont get much money from the powers that be.
We've got over a dozen machines running on 230v 3ph. power on 100amp breakers running 80+ hrs a week so I don't think they'll notice a couple of extra towers on the bill. 1 machine probably uses more power in a day than 2 towers will in a month or more.

I will look at the ML10's though. Thanks.

 

[ddayton]

What you need is to serve a USB port to the network as if it were a local USB port. Digi makes a USB to Ethernet appliance. It requires you to install a Windows driver on your Windows computer and then a simple configuration to link to the appliance and the special driver will make it appear as a local USB port. I am using a Digi 14 port unit to serve USB license dongles so that licensed software running on a Windows VM hosted by VMware can run. To share the dongle will require you to release the port before the next computer can connect. I don't know about the low-end devices, but mine has a web browser interface that allows management and monitoring. Hope that helps.

 

[Nick2253]

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!