assign correct COMSOL installation when multiple installations present

[EE7505-invn]

I have a problem assigning the correct COMSOL installations because I have 3 different installations of COMSOL installed on a computer due to license agreements. We are three people (ME, DM and CYL) using the same "super" computer, we each have our own single-user license, hence we need the 3 installations. The problem is that it cannot assign the correct COMSOL versions.
the three instalations are located in:
C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME
C:\Program Files\COMSOL\DM
C:\Program Files\COMSOL\CYL

when im running the discovery as user CYL I get the following log:
Running test group "discovery".
[00:05.507] Searching system for available Comsol back-ends.
[00:05.586] Searching Windows Registry for Comsol executables.
[00:05.633] Checking registry node "SOFTWARE\Comsol\COMSOL60".
[00:05.648] Checking installation folder "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\COMSOL60\Multiphysics".
[00:05.711] Found Comsol executable "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\COMSOL60\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.exe".
[00:05.789] Checking registry node "SOFTWARE\Comsol\COMSOL62".
[00:05.851] Checking installation folder "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME\COMSOL62\Multiphysics".
[00:05.976] Found Comsol executable "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME\COMSOL62\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.exe".
[00:06.055] Looking for Comsol executable on system search path.
[00:06.195] Running shell command "where comsol".
[00:08.789] Command exited with an error.
[00:08.805] Checking executable "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\COMSOL60\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.exe".
[00:09.023] Found Java bridge configuration "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\COMSOL60\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.ini".
[00:09.226] System architecture is "win64".
[00:09.430] Java VM at relative path "....\java\win64\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll".
[00:09.621] Root folder is "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\COMSOL60\Multiphysics".
[00:12.648] Reported version information is "COMSOL Multiphysics 6.0.0.405".
[00:12.805] Assigned name "6.0" to this installation.
[00:12.992] Checking executable "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME\COMSOL62\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.exe".
[00:13.164] Found Java bridge configuration "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME\COMSOL62\Multiphysics\bin\win64\comsol.ini".
[00:13.196] System architecture is "win64".
[00:13.367] Java VM at relative path "....\java\win64\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll".
[00:13.398] Root folder is "C:\Program Files\COMSOL\ME\COMSOL62\Multiphysics".
[00:16.070] Reported version information is "COMSOL Multiphysics 6.2.0.415".
[00:16.273] Assigned name "6.2" to this installation.

It assigns the installation in "ME" hence the license wont work.
Is there a way to assign the disered installation?

Thanks

[john-hen]

Hi, that's a very unusual setup you got there. The "discovery mechanism" was designed as a convenience, so that users don't have to manually "assign" the Comsol installation. I wanted MPh to work out of the box, without extra configuration. That kind of scenario was definitely not on my radar. Because when you have three Comsol users sharing a workstation, it would be cheaper to get one single-CPU license for all three users, rather than three single-user licences for the same machine. That was certainly the case at the company where I used to work with Comsol. Then again, Comsol's pricing policy is a highly guarded secret, so you never know, I guess.

More to the point, the "correct installation" is definitely subjective in your case. See, the information in the Windows Registry points to the one in COMSOL\ME. Probably because that's the one that was installed last. This is not a per-user setting: Comsol stores that under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and not under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. So even they did not anticipate this scenario.

The way to work around this would usually be to just put comsol.exe on the search path. That is, edit the environment variable PATH for your user and add "your" directory C:\Program Files\COMSOL\CYL\COMSOL62\Multiphysics\bin\win64. So that when you type comsol.exe on the command line, it starts that installation of yours. However, as far as I remember the code, MPh would still pick the installation in ME and ignore yours, because your installation reports back the same Comsol version, 6.2, as the ME one MPh looked at first. So you'd also have to remove (or rename) that Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Comsol\COMSOL62 using the Registory Editor, with a user account that has admin privileges, so that MPh isn't even aware of its existence. It's a hack.

[EE7505-invn]

Hi. Thanks alot for the quick reply and the hack :)

We have used MPh for a couple of years now and It have been working perfectly with the discovery mechanism, but now we got a new machine, a quite big one with 4TB of ram which we have to share. We had 5 computers before, almost 2 each, so for us I think having individual user licenses its the cheapest option.

Will this hack work such that we can all use that computer with MPh? Our IT is not availble today, so I have to wait untill next week to test it.
Again, thanks alot for the quick reply, and for the great package.

[john-hen]

Yes, you just have to put the right comsol.exe on the search path for each user. And disable the global discovery via the Registry hack.