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Offline & Air-Gapped Licensing

An offline licence is cryptographically signed and bound to one cluster ID. It contacts nothing, ever — which is the point, and which is also why the order below matters.

The order is not optional

Section titled “The order is not optional”

The cluster ID only exists once Lifeboat is running, and the binding cannot be corrected after issue. So:

  1. Install with no licence key. The deployment boots into its 24-hour grace period and generates its own cluster ID.
  2. Read that ID from the console’s License page.
  3. Buy, choose Offline, and supply that cluster ID — one per licence.
  4. The signed .lic arrives by email, already bound.
  5. Upload it on the License page, or place it on the data volume and point LIFEBOAT_LICENSE_FILE at it and restart.

Getting an ID wrong produces a file the install refuses, and it cannot be edited — it has to be re-issued.

What the check enforces

Section titled “What the check enforces”

The upload is validated on every import, not only the first:

  • A licence bound to a different cluster ID is rejected.
  • A licence carrying no cluster ID is rejected — an unbound file would run anywhere, which is the same hole with the binding left off.
  • IDs are compared case-insensitively and with surrounding whitespace ignored, because the ID passes through a human at purchase time and a pasted capital letter must not mint a permanently dead file.

What an offline licence cannot do

Section titled “What an offline licence cannot do”
  • Receive entitlement upgrades. Adding confidential computing, or extending a term, means a re-issued file. An online deployment picks those up on its next check-in.
  • Be revoked remotely. A binding released centrally cannot reach a box that never phones home; it has to be deactivated on the machine itself.
  • Send telemetry. It sends nothing at all, including the census.

If the data volume is lost

Section titled “If the data volume is lost”

The deployment generates a new cluster ID, and the existing licence no longer matches. The licence must be re-issued against the new ID.

This is what one-licence-one-cluster means, and it is the strongest argument for backing up the data volume — it carries the identity, not just the data.

Sources and references

Section titled “Sources and references”