quartus license server through ssh tunel

Hi,

thanks for reply. VPN connection was banned where I work due to some security problems. It's clear that when you have VPN connection, those problems disappear because your VPN server dedicates to you an IP address which is in the range of the license server hence your computer 'looks' as if it was a part of your work network.

this is not the case when you're outside of work-network. however, yesterday I've found a working solution, maybe it helps to somebody:

1) make ssh tunnel to some machine which is at your work. in my case, a desktop pc on my table at lab:

ssh -N -L 12345:<mylabmachine>:22 <username>@<gateserver>

2) make a ssh tunel to pass the flexlm ports of your choice. now the stuff: in my case, the work license server when looking into quartus licence is 1800@<licserver>, so my guess was that port 1800 must be tunneled. This is OK, but it is not enough. There is one more port which must be tunneled. I've used WireShark on windows machine at work to make port scan of my computer and look for port which is used to communicate with license server. Quick inspection gave port number 36534. Hence the tunnel must be setup as follows:

ssh -N -p 12345 -L 1800:<licenseserver>:1800 -L 36534:<licenseserver>:36534 <yourworkusername>@localhost

NOTE: this command uses ssh tunnel to your lab machine to tunnel through this machine ports 1800 and 36534.

3) specify either in quartus license to use '1800@localhost' as your license server.

This works. I'm sure that there is easier way (i can imagine that first tunnel is not mandatory and one can use gateserver directly to pass-through the ports, however I did not try this). The only problem is that the second port number (36354 in my case) changes from time to time without any reason (on a week basis). maybe when license server reboots, it starts to use different port number.... no idea.

Would be very nice to have this thing automated however the port number changes always require to use wireshark to identify the port numbers. for this one has to have a pc, which successfully starts the quartus using the license server....

If there is somebody from Altera on this forum, could he comment a bit whether there is a 'standard' way how to access license servers when behind firewall? or at least get the idea of which ports must be tunneled without prior using wireshark

d.