To obtain a Gurobi license key you'll need to run the grbgetkey
command on your machine. Note that the machine must be connected to
the Internet from a recognized academic domain in order to retrieve a
free academic license. An Internet connection is not required after
you have obtained your license key.
The exact command to run for a specific license is indicated at the
bottom of the License Detail page (e.g., grbgetkey 253e22f3-...
). We
recommend that you use copy-paste to copy the entire grbgetkey
command from our website and paste it into a Terminal window.
The grbgetkey
program passes identifying information about
your machine back to our website, and the website responds with your
license key. Once this exchange has occurred, grbgetkey
will
ask for the name of the directory in which to store your license
key file (gurobi.lic
). You should see a prompt that looks
like this:
--------------------- Saving license key... --------------------- In which directory would you like to store the Gurobi license key file? [hit Enter to store it in /home/jones]:
You can store the license key file anywhere, but we strongly recommend that you accept the default location by hitting Enter. Setting up a non-default location is error-prone and a frequent source of trouble.
If you receive an error message at this stage, it typically means that we were unable to validate your academic domain. Please consult the Academic Validation section for more information.
Using a non-default license file location
When you run the Mac version of the Gurobi Optimizer, it will look for
the gurobi.lic
key file in three different default locations.
It will always look in your home directory. In addition, Gurobi
Optimizer 7.0.2will also look in /Library/gurobi
and
/Library/gurobi702.
If you would still like to use a non-default license key file
location, you can do so by setting environment variable
GRB_LICENSE_FILE
to point to the license key file. Important note: the environment variable should point to the license
key file itself, not to the directory that contains the file.
On Mac systems, you can set the optional GRB_LICENSE_FILE
environment variable through environment.plist
, as explained in
Apple's Runtime configuration Guidelines.
Next steps
If your license includes the Distributed Add-On and you plan to use any of the Gurobi distributed algorithms, you'll also need to set up Gurobi Remote Services on your distributed worker machines.
Once you have followed the steps above and have obtained a license key file, your next step is to test your license.