Renewal and privacy

A key holds until the end of the period paid for. At each renewal, the portal issues a new key for the next period. It reaches your installation by email, to paste, or online, by itself.

By email

At each renewal, once a month on a monthly plan and once a year on a yearly one, the portal emails the new key, and keeps it under Licenses. Paste it into System → License before the old one's grace runs out: see Install a license key.

An installation that never reaches the internet works this way, and needs nothing more.

Online

Once a key is installed, HivePaaS asks the license portal for a newer one every day, at 03:30 in the installation's timezone, and whenever someone clicks Check for a newer key in System → License. The portal answers:

Answer	HivePaaS
newer	installs the key it sends: a renewal, a plan change, a paid key in place of a trial.
moved	notes when the license was moved to another installation.
current	nothing: the key installed is the newest.

A newer key is checked as a pasted one is, and refused the same way: the portal is trusted with which key is newest, never with whether a key is valid here.

A check that fails, such as when the portal cannot be reached, is tried once more, then again the next day; the key installed holds meanwhile. System → License → Online renewal shows the last check, what came of it, and its error. Each daily check is also a task, with its log, in Operations → Tasks.

The installation needs to reach portal.hivepaas.com over HTTPS, port 443.

Exactly what is sent

POST https://portal.hivepaas.com/api/licenses/refresh
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/json
User-Agent: HivePaaS

{"key": "<the license key installed>", "installationId": "<the installation ID>"}

That is all. No usage, no counts, no names of projects, apps, users, domains or nodes, no hostname, and no version: the user agent says HivePaaS, and nothing more. The key is what proves the request: the portal answers only for a key it issued, and only for the installation that key names. Like any server, the portal sees the address the request comes from.

• Nothing is sent without a key. An installation on Bee with no key installed never contacts the portal.
• Over HTTPS only, to the portal only. HivePaaS follows no redirect, so the key goes nowhere else.
• The buttons are links. Upgrade, Start a 14-day trial and Your licenses open the portal in your browser, the first two with the installation ID in the address. HivePaaS itself sends nothing when they are clicked.

The portal's address is https://portal.hivepaas.com, which the HP_LICENSE_PORTAL_URL setting changes; only testing needs to.

What the portal keeps

Of a refresh, nothing but two counters, which limit how often it can be asked: one for the request's address, kept for a minute, and one for the key, by its hash, kept for a day. A refresh is not logged, and changes nothing in the portal's database.

Of your account: your name and email address, your licenses, the installations they are for, the keys issued and the moves made, and a copy of your subscriptions as Paddle reports them. Your payment details are Paddle's: the portal never sees them.

See the privacy policy.

What HivePaaS keeps

The key installed, in its database, and of the last check: when it was, what came of it, and its error. HivePaaS never writes the key in a log, and its API answers with the name the key was issued to, never the email. Installing a key is recorded in the audit log by its license ID, plan and end date, and so is a Check for a newer key that changes it; a daily check writes the same in its task's log.

Turn online renewal off

Off, the daily check asks nothing. Check for a newer key still asks, when someone clicks it: renewed keys are pasted from their email, or fetched that way. System → License → Online renewal shows Daily check as Off.

There are two ways. The first lasts.

In hivepaas.toml

In the app data directory, /var/lib/hivepaas by default, hivepaas.toml has a [license] section. Set:

[license]
refresh_disabled = true

An installation made before the section was added to the file has none: add it, at the end. Leave the file's permissions as they are: HivePaaS refuses it if anyone but root can read it.

HivePaaS reads the file when it starts: restart it in System → HivePaaS → Actions, with Main service and Worker service(s). The setting then holds through updates, the installer's --redeploy, and an install over a kept database. Set in the file, it wins over the environment variable below.

With an environment variable

docker service update --env-add HP_LICENSE_REFRESH_DISABLED=true hivepaas_app
docker service update --env-add HP_LICENSE_REFRESH_DISABLED=true hivepaas_worker

Each service restarts with it. It holds until HivePaaS's stack is deployed again from its file, as the installer's --redeploy does, which drops it: set it in hivepaas.toml to keep it.