Installing Without Superuser Credentials

Micro Focus recommends that you install this product with superuser permissions. If, however, you need to perform a non-root installation, check the information below. The setup file supports installing into non-root owned directories.

Licensing considerations

SafeNet License Manager does not support non-root installs. When using non-root installations, the setup file automatically installs and configures AutoPass as the default License Manager.
Multiple users - on a machine that has multiple user accounts that need access to the product and licensing, you must install the product under a user id that has read, write, and execution permissions for all users.
By default, most user account areas can only be accessed by the owner. In order for all of the users to be able to use the product and License Manager, the installation must be in an account whose $HOME directory all other users on the machine can access.

Performing a non-root installation

Give execute permissions to the setup file:
```
chmod +x setup_cobol_server_8.0_platform
```
Run the installer with the -noroot command line argument:
```
setup_cobol_server_8.0_platform -noroot
```
This installs the product in the default location, $HOME/microfocus/VisualCOBOL, where $HOME should point to the top-level login directory for the current user.

The product configuration files are stored in $HOME/microfocus/config, and the CAS regions are stored in $HOME/microfocus/es, by default.
After the installation, you can execute $COBDIR/bin/cobsetenv to set up all the required environment variables.

After installing

Once the installation is complete, you need to run the cobsetenv script in order to set up your COBOL environment. To do this, execute the following command:

. $HOME/microfocus/VisualCOBOL/cobsetenv

. $HOME/microfocus/EnterpriseDeveloper/cobsetenv

In addition, on clean machines where licensing has not been installed before, or has not been installed as the root user, you must set the MFCES_INIT_LOCATION environment variable. By default, MFCES_INIT_LOCATION is set in cobsetenv within the installed product. You must also set it in any scripts which use the COBOL product or set the environment as follows:

MFCES_INIT_LOCATION=$HOME/microfocus/licensing/ces/bin/ces.ini
export MFCES_INIT_LOCATION

This provides the location of the ces.ini licensing configuration file in the non-root installation area for the COBOL Run-Time System.

You do not need to set MFCES_INIT_LOCATION on machines where licensing has been installed using the root user. On such machines, there are files in /var/microfocuslicensing/bin and mfcesd, and the SafeNet and/or Autopass processes are running as root. In this scenario, MFCES_INIT_LOCATION is commented out in cobsetenv and you do not need to update any of your scripts with the MFCES_INIT_LOCATION settings. The product installed in a non-root location uses the root install licensing.

Configuring ports

The /etc/services file for the registration of port 86 is owned by the root user and cannot be changed without superuser permissions.

You need to ensure that this file includes the mfcobol port entries. On most new operating systems, the entries are present.

However, on some operating systems these port entries might be missing. The setup file reports this issue before installing the product. To resolve it, you need to edit /etc/services manually in a text editor with root permissions and add the following two lines:

mfcobol		86/tcp	# Micro Focus Cobol
mfcobol		86/udp	# Micro Focus Cobol

Additional arguments

Specify -ESadminID="username", if you want to use the SOA functionality.

For non-default installation locations for the product and the product configuration files, use the -installlocation, - mfconfiglocation, and -CASrtDIR command line arguments. See Install Options for details.