Deploying a license file (offline / fleet)
Most installs register through the built-in flow: you enter your email, click the verification link, and PII Crawler stores the issued license locally. That round-trip needs network access and a human at each machine, which does not fit air-gapped environments or large fleets.
For those cases PII Crawler reads an optional license.lic file from its app data directory at startup. If the file contains a valid, unexpired license for PII Crawler, the app registers itself from it automatically. No network call, no clicking, no per-machine interaction. Ship the same file with every install and each copy registers on first launch.
Where to put license.lic
Drop the file in the same directory PII Crawler already uses for its database:
| Platform | Location |
|---|---|
| Linux | ~/.piicrawler/license.lic |
| macOS | ~/.piicrawler/license.lic |
| Windows | %USERPROFILE%\.piicrawler\license.lic (for example C:\Users\Alice\.piicrawler\license.lic) |
The directory is created the first time PII Crawler runs. If you are provisioning a machine before the first launch, create the .piicrawler directory yourself and place the file inside it.
How it works
On every startup PII Crawler looks for license.lic in the app data directory. When it finds one it:
- Verifies the license signature against the key built into the app.
- Checks that the license is for PII Crawler and has not expired.
- If valid, stores it as the active license so the app starts fully registered, and records the licensee email shown in the app.
The check is safe by design:
- A valid existing registration is never overwritten. If the machine is already registered (online or from a previous file), the file is ignored. You can leave
license.licin place permanently. - A missing, unreadable, expired, or invalid file never blocks startup. PII Crawler logs the reason and falls back to the normal registration flow, so a bad file can not lock anyone out.
You can confirm what happened in the app's Logs view: a successful load logs Registered from …license.lic for <email>, and a rejected file logs why it was ignored.
Getting a license file
license.lic contains a signed license token issued for your account. Contact your PII Crawler account representative to request a deployment license for fleet or offline use. The same file works on Linux, macOS, and Windows and on as many machines as your agreement covers, until the license expiration date.
Updating or rotating a license
To replace a license across a fleet, distribute a new license.lic. Because the file is only used to seed a machine that is not already registered, refresh it like this:
- Push the new
license.licto each machine's app data directory. - Remove the old stored registration so the new file is picked up. The simplest way is to clear the app's data, or have the machine re-read the file on a fresh profile.
For most deployments the cleaner path is to provision the new file as part of a fresh install or image, where there is no prior registration to supersede.
Related
- Updating PII Crawler — your license is preserved across binary updates.
- Where results are stored — the app data directory that also holds
license.lic.