Symptoms:
- How do I activate my Educational License?
- I have more than one device that I need to activate on multiple machines.
Cause:
Often our Educational License holders need to activate on a full lab of machines at one time. Although this is not yet possible, we do now support batch file activation, which makes things a lot easier.
Resolution:
Here is some background on how Educational Licenses are activated, as educational serials are not activated in the standard way.
At this time, we have no official way of activating licenses on multiple machines at the same time. However, there is a workaround using the command line.
Try activating via Command Line:
Windows: C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Unity.exe" -batchmode -username name@example.edu.uk -password XXXXXXXXXXXXX -serial E3-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX –quit
Mac: /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity
We cannot give you the exact commands as every institutes' system is set up in different ways. However, we can give you some typical commands and you can make changes where you see fit.
Here is a link with arguments which can help you here.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html
If this does not work, it may be due to your particular firewalls. Educational firewalls can be tricky to get around with our licenses.
Try allowing these ports: 80 and 443
As for any firewall which may be running. Add the following hostnames:
(IP's may vary):
Check your Proxy settings:
HTTPS_proxy=https://proxyusername:proxypassword@proxyaddress.com:8080
UNITY_PROXYSERVER=https://proxyusername:proxypassword@proxyaddress.com:8080
Other than those, there have been reports that the following IP's are contacted (by Google):
74.125.226.222
173.194.43.30
We also recommend checking:
1) Network issue - Some education users will have an internal network and lack of internet access (can you verify if you can ping to https://core.cloud.unity3d.com/api/login on the command line?).
2) To verify if it is a CACerts.pem issue, can you follow this code:
https://github.com/justin-zheng/travisbuildtest
CACerts.pem is included in the repository
3) If you are able to install from a non-admin account, the activation should work for all non-admin accounts on that machine
4) If the above is not possible, please locate the license file after activating and save it in a shared area for that machine. This way if a different user signs into the machine, the license file should be shared and the activation should be there.
License files are found here:
* Windows: C:\ProgramData\Unity (If the files aIf are hidden, you need to click View and tick the Hidden Items check box.)
* Mac: Library/Application Support/Unity
If the activations will still not go through after the above, you will need to go through the manual activation process instead.
Educational firewalls can be particularly strict, so manual activation is currently the normal process. Guidance for this can be found here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ManualActivationGuide.html
We can only give you suggestions on the activation process within an educational environment as each campus's firewalls, IP's etc can differ quite dramatically.
Make sure to move the .ULF file into a shared network area for the students to access. If the file stays in the admin area, student logins will not work.
We always recommend creating a generic Admin email address & username for running the Unity install. Once you have done this the students will then be able to simply login in using their own email address & password.
Comments
15 comments
This works well but the account used to activate the software is still logged in when the users open the software giving them access to change account settings. How do you log that user out so they can use the software in Offline Mode?
Hi there,
Sorry to hear you are having some issues with your Educational activation.
If you have activated with an admin account, you will need to locate the license file after activating and save it in a shared area for that machine.
This means if a different user signs into the machine, the activation should be there and they will not need to be logged in with the admin account.
License files are found here:
* Windows: C:\ProgramData\Unity
* Mac: Library/Application Support/Unity
The software activates fine and any user can login and use the activated program. The problem I am having is that the admin account used to activate the program is still logged into the program and the students can click manage account and it takes them to the online account management page. I need to know how to sign out the admin account as part of the cmd line activation so the students use the program in "work offline", ie not able to access the Asset Store. I am using the below deployment guide and option 1 on the first page.
https://unity3d.com/sites/default/files/unity-license-deployment.pdf
@JCS Unity I noticed the same problem in my lab - but only on the one machine where I was logged in when the script to install the license ran. I was not left logged in to any of the other machines. Once I logged out of my Unity account on that one machine I was not logged in when I relaunched Unity.
I used this PowerShell script to deploy licenses to the machines in my lab (running Windows 7). It is relatively easy and quick. Let we know if you have questions about the process:
$Hostnames = cat $LabConfigDir\TargetMachines\hostnames.txt
$Sessions = New-PSSession $Hostnames
invoke-command -Session $Sessions -ScriptBlock { & "C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Unity.exe" -quit -batchmode -serial E3-AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD -username me@myschool.org -password guess }
If you use this, make sure that the commands don't break across lines - there are only three lines above. You'll also need to have a relatively recent version of PowerShell installed (it seems to be installed by default, but at least on Windows 7 the version needs to be updated - its a free download) and you may need to enable remote execution and allow scripts. You do not need to be logged in to the machines you are installing the license on.
How can I tell whether a installation is activated after a network install? We live behind a proxy.
Hi, my name is Laura Carreon, I want to design a Unity day event at my university, and I wonder how can I get some help from you, in order to have some workshops or lectures. I'm the coordinator of the 3D design and videogame program.
Thank you
Laura Carreón
Universidad Incarnate Word Campus Bajío
Irapuato, Guanajuato, México
I was running into a strange edge case that wasted a bunch of my time and wanted to leave a comment here for anyone who might run into this in the future. I had a % sign in my auto generated password and it turns out that the percent sign is a special case in windows command line that will work just fine at a command prompt but will not run in a saved .bat file. In order for it to run in saved .bat file you will need to type %%.
Found this info after an hour or two of trying to understand what was going on:
The percent sign (%) is a special case. On the command line, it does not need quoting or escaping unless two of them are used to indicate a variable, such as %OS%. But in a batch file, you have to use a double percent sign (%%) to yield a single percent sign (%). Enclosing the percent sign in quotation marks or preceding it with caret does not work. (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Windows_Batch_Scripting)
Hello
Can someone provide me with the command to do this on a Mac system? The only path you provide is for windows workstations.
Hi. We seem to be having an issue with using this method with the 2019.2.1 version (not tried other 2019 versions) but it worked with 2018.2. Has anyone got this working with 2019?
We're experiencing a similar issue as Yvan. When we try to activate 2019.1.5 it returns error level 1, which we believe is that Unity cannot retrieve a valid WinSAT assessment. Again the same command works fine with 2018.
Could you help please. I have a number of Mac labs that need the license activating. What would be the command line to do this, as the example you give above is only for Windows machines.
Does anyone use this in a VDI environment?
We use Vmware Horizon and even though I can activate the license on the server the app is installed on, when the user goes to our app portal and runs the app it says the license is not activated.
Here is how we do it, within a user login script: https://gist.github.com/michaelp85/05ece28e3a959ffda008441774170dac
Pre-reqs:
What the login script does:
If the StopDate value is current, it does nothing.
If it's something else, we blow away the current license and re-license via batch mode.
If the Unity_lic.ulf file doesn't exist at all, we license via batch mode.
We've got thousands of PCs, and so far this is the most reliable licensing mechanism we've found.
Hi AIE Software,
Thanks for the detail process you have been using with the Educational License. Hope other users find it useful too.
We wil have this process in mind.
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