Before you can process a log, Qinertia has to make sure you have a valid license. Qinertia CLI supports both online floating license and offline node locked licenses.

Authentication Methods

Qinertia relies on MySBG license server to fetch/release your floating license automatically. It can also be used for offline node locked licenses to 'install' a license on the local computer easily.

Qinertia requires the user to be authenticated to access the license information as well as some user settings such as CORS providers credentials.

Qinertia supports two authentication methods:

  • Interactive login/password prompt (ideal for power users that would like to create automated workflows)
  • API key and secret (designed for machine to machine integrations)

User login/password

If you are a power user and would like to create complex and automated workflows, you can use your account login/password to authenticate to MySBG and fetch your Qinertia license and profile settings easily.

Each time Qinertia CLI requires to be authenticated, and unless you provide an API Key and Secret, a login dialog box should popup as shown below:

Once you are logged in, you can issue as many Qinertia CLI command without having to re-enter your credentials.

Login/Logout

You can manually logout and close the local session by using the command qinertia-cli logout

Access Token

Access Token / API Key is the best solution to integrate Qinertia CLI within your application. You have to connect to your MySBG account and go to the Access Tokens menu to create a new access token.

Once you have created a new access token, you should get a key and secret. Please keep the secret in a secured place as you will not be able to retrieve it once this panel is closed.

You can now use the access token and client secret to authenticate Qinertia CLI easily with the options --api-key and --secret when applicable.

Fine Control

You can create several access tokens to finely control Qinertia CLI integration. For instance, you can have an access token used for Qinertia CLI integration within your software A and an other token for integration within software B.

User Information

You can use the command user-info to check if Qinertia already has a valid logged user and license. Once a valid license is check out or installed (offline node locked), Qinertia keeps it unless you issue a logout or you revoke the license.

You can output the results of this command as human readable information or to JSON lines with the additional option --status-output stdout to ease machine to machine integration.

Please find below an example when Qinertia is successfully logged in with a valid floating license:

qinertia-cli user-info
User Profile:
        Name : Jean Dupont
        Email: jdupont@gmail.com
License:
        Key     : AFZXHDDG3I
        Name    : Qinertia Pro
        Type    : Perpetual
        Validity: 16/07/2023

If no user is logged in and thus no valid license is setup, this command should return the following:

qinertia-cli user-info
[Error] - No user logged in.

Floating License

This is the easiest way to use Qinertia CLI. The software will automatically fetch, use and return the license from MySBG license server.

If you simply try to process a mission, Qinertia will prompt the user to log in if needed or start the processing if a session is already opened:

qinertia-cli process --process-file demoUav.json

For machine to machine integration, simply indicates the API Key and secret to authenticate and fetch the license. If you don't specify the license to fetch, the default/last used license will be selected:

qinertia-cli process --api-key api_1k3q9gbttg5s --secret em0OQqzfdPBY2WenbHqM --license XFG5D8Z46A --process-file demoUav.json

If you don't want to provide credential information for each qinertia-cli call, you can use the login command first to cache the authentication session:

qinertia-cli login

You can logout at any moment by typing the following command:

qinertia-cli logout

User/Password options

The --user and --password options present in Qinertia 3.x have been replaced by the new API Key method in Qinertia 4.x and above to improve security and avoid using user credentials.

Node Locked

Qinertia CLI can be used offline using node locked licenses. A node locked license is bound to the computer on which Qinertia is running. Qinertia can thus be used without having to check over internet for license validity.

There are two ways to get and install a node locked license:

  • Use Qinertia CLI roam command to let Qinertia automatically check, fetch and install the offline license. This method is only applicable if internet is available during initial license installation.
  • Get the computer host-id using Qinertia CLI and then visit MySBG license management website to generate and download a license file for the computer host id. This method works even if the destination computer has no internet access at all.

Please read the How to use Qinertia offline page to learn how to generate an offline license file and revoke it when you don't need it anymore.

Using Internet

Qinertia can automatically fetch and install locally the license with the roam command. This process requires an internet connection and necessitates either login credentials or API Key information for authentication.

For the following commands, if an API Key is not provided, a popup windows will be triggered to let you login via MySBG.

Install the license

Use the command below to generate, fetch and install an offline node locked license on the computer running Qinertia CLI.

You have to specify on which license a seat should be consumed and you can define a roaming duration after witch the license seat is automatically released.

qinertia-cli.exe roam --api-key api_1k3q9gbttg5s --secret em0OQqzfdPBY2WenbHqM --license LAXFDR4W3N --duration max

Use the license

The license has been installed locally on the computer. You can now use Qinertia directly without having to provide credentials nor license information. No internet connection is required to use Qinertia. You can, for example start a processing using the command below:

qinertia-cli process --process-file demoUav.json

Revoke the license

At any time, you can revoke the license and give the seat back to the license server. As for the the license installation process, Qinertia requires an internet connection for this step:

qinertia-cli revoke --api-key api_1k3q9gbttg5s --secret em0OQqzfdPBY2WenbHqM

Offline Mode

If Qinertia is running on a computer that couldn't access internet, please follow this procedure to generate and install the license.

Generate the license

To generate an offline license file, you need the computer host id on which Qinertia CLI is running. You can easily query the computer host id using the following command:

qinertia-cli host-id

You should get a code such as 01ab392d239567 that identifies your computer hardware. The host id is required to generate the offline license file on the https://my.sbg-systems.com management platform.

Use the license

Once you have a valid offline license file, you can use it with Qinertia CLI. Simply provide the license file path each time you call Qinertia CLI. This is done using the --license option as shown in the example below:

qinertia-cli process --license C:\\MyApplication\myQinertiaLicense.lic --process-file demoUav.json

Revoke the license

If you don't need the offline license anymore and would like to give back the seat, you can also use Qinertia CLI to revoke the license. There are two ways to revoke an offline license depending on if Qinertia CLI can access internet:

  • If Qinertia CLI can access internet, simply use the revoke command. You can optionally provide user login information and explicitly define which license file has to be revoked.
  • If Qinertia CLI has no internet access, you should first get a revoke key using the command last-revoke-key and then use the returned key in https://my.sbg-systems.com to release the license.

Revoke Key

Keep the revoke key carefully until you have successfully returned the license on the online license management platform. If you lost the revoke key, you will not be able to release the seat consumed by the offline license.