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Installing on RPM-based Linux (RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE)

Overview

This guide covers RabbitMQ installation on RPM-based Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, Fedora, openSUSE).

RabbitMQ is included in standard Fedora and RHEL repositories. However, the versions included are many releases behind latest RabbitMQ releases and may provide RabbitMQ versions that are already out of support.

Team RabbitMQ produces our own RPM packages and distributes them using Cloudsmith and PackageCloud.

There are two ways of installing these RPMs:

The following guide focuses on RabbitMQ installation on RPM-based distributions such as Fedora, RHEL and CentOS. It covers a number of topics:

and more.

Overview

The package is distributed via Yum repositories on PackageCloud.

rabbitmq-server is included in Fedora. However, the versions included often lag behind RabbitMQ releases. It is recommended that you use Yum repositories from PackageCloud.

Check the Fedora package details for which version of the server is available for which versions of the distribution.

Supported Distributions

RabbitMQ is supported on several major RPM-based distributions that are still actively maintained by their primary vendor or developer group.

Note that modern versions of Erlang can have incompatibilities with older distributions (e.g. older than three to four years) or ship without much or any testing on older distributions or OS kernel versions.

Older distributions can also lack a recent enough version of OpenSSL. Erlang 24 cannot be used on distributions that do not provide OpenSSL 1.1 as a system library. CentOS 7 and Fedora releases older than 26 are examples of such distributions.

Currently the list of supported RPM-based distributions includes

The packages may work on other RPM-based distributions if dependencies are satisfied but their testing and support is done on a best effort basis.

User Privilege Requirements

RabbitMQ RPM package will require sudo privileges to install and manage. In environments where sudo isn't available, consider using the generic binary build.

Install Erlang

Before installing RabbitMQ, you must install a supported version of Erlang/OTP. Standard Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS repositories provide Erlang versions that are typically out of date and cannot be used to run latest RabbitMQ releases.

There are three alternative sources for modern Erlang on RPM-based distributions:

  • Team RabbitMQ produces a package stripped down to only provide those components needed to run RabbitMQ. This is the recommended option.
  • openSUSE produces Erlang packages for openSUSE Leap
  • Erlang Solutions produces packages that are usually reasonably up to date and involve installation of a potentially excessive list of dependencies

Zero-dependency Erlang from RabbitMQ

Zero dependency Erlang RPM package for running RabbitMQ can be installed from a direct download from GitHub, as well as Yum repositories on Cloudsmith.io and PackageCloud.

As the name suggests, the package strips off some Erlang modules and dependencies that are not essential for running RabbitMQ.

Erlang packages from openSUSE

openSUSE package repositories provide Erlang so it can be installed using Zypper:

sudo zypper in erlang

Erlang versions available in the standard repositories will in practice be behind the most recent version. To use the last version with the newest features, add the openSUSE Factory repositories for Erlang:

# add the openSUSE erlang factory, obs:// extracts the http url for the matching distro.
sudo zypper ar -f  obs://devel:languages:erlang:Factory openSUSE-Erlang-Factory

# import the signing key and refresh the repository
sudo zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh

# install a recent Erlang version
sudo zypper in erlang

Package Dependencies

When installing with Yum, all dependencies other than Erlang/OTP should be resolved and installed automatically as long as compatible versions are available. When that's not the case, dependency packages must be installed manually.

However, when installing a local RPM file via yum dependencies must be installed manually. The dependencies are:

Install Using PackageCloud Yum Repository

A Yum repository with RabbitMQ packages is available from PackageCloud. Package Cloud also can be used to install a recent Erlang version via yum.

A quick way to set up the repository is to use a Package Cloud-provided script. It is not a requirement and should be carefully considered since it pipes a generated script from the public Internet to a privileged shell.

## Uses a PackageCloud-provided Yum repository setup script.
## Always verify what is downloaded before piping it to a privileged shell!
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

The rest of this section guide will focus on a more traditional way that explicitly installs a Yum repository file.

Yum will verify signatures of any packages it installs, therefore the first step in the process is to import the signing key

## primary RabbitMQ signing key
rpm --import https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
## modern Erlang repository
rpm --import https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/erlang/gpgkey
## RabbitMQ server repository
rpm --import https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey

Note that if any of the above import commands finishes with an error due to the SHA1 hash algorithm, you must execute the following first:

sudo update-crypto-policies --set LEGACY

And then retry the failed import command(s).

Add Yum Repositories for RabbitMQ and Modern Erlang

In order to use the Yum repository, a .repo file (e.g. rabbitmq.repo) has to be added under the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. The contents of the file will vary slightly between distributions (e.g. CentOS Stream 9, CentOS Stream 8, or OpenSUSE).

Red Hat 8, CentOS Stream 9, CentOS 8, Modern Fedora Releases

The following example sets up a repository that will install RabbitMQ and its Erlang dependency from PackageCloud, and targets CentOS Stream and CentOS 8. The same repository definition can be used by recent Fedora releases.

# In /etc/yum.repos.d/rabbitmq.repo

##
## Zero dependency Erlang
##

[rabbitmq_erlang]
name=rabbitmq_erlang
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/erlang/el/8/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# PackageCloud's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/erlang/gpgkey
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

[rabbitmq_erlang-source]
name=rabbitmq_erlang-source
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/erlang/el/8/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
# PackageCloud's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/erlang/gpgkey
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

##
## RabbitMQ server
##

[rabbitmq_server]
name=rabbitmq_server
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/el/8/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
# PackageCloud's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

[rabbitmq_server-source]
name=rabbitmq_server-source
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/el/8/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

OpenSUSE

The following example targets OpenSUSE and only installs the RabbitMQ package repository. Erlang is assumed to be provisioned from the devel:languages:erlang:Factory repository.

[rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server]
name=rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/opensuse/15.1/$basearch
enabled=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
pkg_gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server-source]
name=rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server-source
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/opensuse/15.1/SRPMS
enabled=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
pkg_gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

Install Packages with Yum

Red Hat 8, CentOS Stream, CentOS 8, Modern Fedora

Update Yum package metadata:

yum update -y
yum -q makecache -y --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo='rabbitmq_erlang' --enablerepo='rabbitmq_server'

Next install dependencies from the standard repositories:

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
yum install socat logrotate -y

Finally, install modern Erlang and RabbitMQ:

## install RabbitMQ and zero dependency Erlang from the above repositories,
## ignoring any versions provided by the standard repositories
yum install --repo rabbitmq_erlang --repo rabbitmq_server erlang rabbitmq-server -y

Install Packages with Zypper

First, update Zypper package metadata:

## refresh the repository. These verbose repository names are used by PackageCloud
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server-source

Then install the packages:

## install the package from PackageCloud repository
zypper install --repo rabbitmq_rabbitmq-server rabbitmq-server

Install Using Cloudsmith Yum Repository

A Yum repository with RabbitMQ packages is available from Cloudsmith. Cloudsmith also can be used to install a recent Erlang version via yum.

A quick way to set up the repository is to use a Cloudsmith-provided script. It is not a requirement and should be carefully considered since it pipes a generated script from the public Internet to a privileged shell.

## Uses a Cloudsmith-provided Yum repository setup script.
## Always verify what is downloaded before piping it to a privileged shell!
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/setup.rpm.sh' | sudo -E bash

The rest of this section will focus on a more traditional way that explicitly installs a Yum repository file.

Yum will verify signatures of any packages it installs, therefore the first step in the process is to import the signing key

## primary RabbitMQ signing key
rpm --import https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
## modern Erlang repository
rpm --import 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/gpg.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key'
## RabbitMQ server repository
rpm --import 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key'

Add Yum Repositories for RabbitMQ and Modern Erlang

In order to use the Yum repository, a .repo file (e.g. rabbitmq.repo) has to be added under the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. The contents of the file will vary slightly between distributions (e.g. CentOS Stream 9, CentOS Stream 8, or OpenSUSE).

Red Hat 8, CentOS 8, Modern Fedora Releases

The following example sets up a repository that will install RabbitMQ and its Erlang dependency from Cloudsmith, and targets CentOS Stream 8. The same repository definition can be used by recent Fedora releases and CentOS Stream 9.

# In /etc/yum.repos.d/rabbitmq.repo

##
## Zero dependency Erlang RPM
##

[rabbitmq_erlang]
name=rabbitmq_erlang
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/rpm/el/8/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/gpg.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_erlang-noarch]
name=rabbitmq_erlang-noarch
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/rpm/el/8/noarch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/gpg.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_erlang-source]
name=rabbitmq_erlang-source
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/rpm/el/8/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang/gpg.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
gpgcheck=0
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md


##
## RabbitMQ Server
##

[rabbitmq_server]
name=rabbitmq_server
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/el/8/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_server-noarch]
name=rabbitmq_server-noarch
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/el/8/noarch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_server-source]
name=rabbitmq_server-source
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/el/8/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
gpgcheck=0
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

OpenSUSE

The following example targets OpenSUSE and only installs the RabbitMQ package repository. Erlang is assumed to be provisioned from the devel:languages:erlang:Factory repository.

##
## RabbitMQ server
##

[rabbitmq_server]
name=rabbitmq_server
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/opensuse/15.1/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_server-noarch]
name=rabbitmq_server-noarch
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/opensuse/15.1/noarch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[rabbitmq_server-source]
name=rabbitmq_server-source
baseurl=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/rpm/opensuse/15.1/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpg.9F4587F226208342.key
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

Install Packages with Yum

Red Hat 8, CentOS Stream 9, CentOS 8, Modern Fedora

Update Yum package metadata:

yum update -y
yum -q makecache -y --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo='rabbitmq_erlang-noarch' --enablerepo='rabbitmq_server-noarch'

Next install dependencies from the standard repositories:

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
yum install socat logrotate -y

Finally, install modern Erlang and RabbitMQ:

## install RabbitMQ and zero dependency Erlang from the above repositories,
## ignoring any versions provided by the standard repositories
yum install --repo rabbitmq_erlang --repo rabbitmq_server-noarch erlang rabbitmq-server

Install Packages with Zypper

First, update Zypper package metadata:

## refresh the RabbitMQ repositories
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh rabbitmq_server
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh rabbitmq_server-noarch
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh rabbitmq_server-source

Then install the packages:

## install the package from Cloudsmith repository
zypper install --repo rabbitmq_server-noarch

Package Version Locking in Yum

yum version locking plugin can be used to prevent unexpected package upgrades. Using it carries the risk of leaving the system behind in terms of updates, including important bug fixes and security patches.

With rpm and Downloaded RPM

After downloading the server package, issue the following command as 'root':

rpm --import https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/2.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
yum install socat logrotate -y

# This example assumes the CentOS Stream 8 version of the package, suitable for
# Red Hat 8, CentOS Stream 9, CentOS Stream 8 and modern Fedora releases.
yum install rabbitmq-server-3.11.8-1.el8.noarch.rpm

RabbitMQ public signing key can also be downloaded from rabbitmq.com:

rpm --import https://www.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
yum install socat logrotate -y

# This example assumes the CentOS 8 version of the package, suitable for
# Red Hat 8, CentOS Stream 9, CentOS Stream 8 and modern Fedora releases.
yum install rabbitmq-server-3.11.8-1.el8.noarch.rpm

Download the Server

In some cases it may be easier to download the package and install it manually. The package can be downloaded from GitHub.

Description Download Signature
RPM for RHEL Linux 8.x, CentOS Stream 9, CentOS 8.x, Fedora 32+ (supports systemd) rabbitmq-server-3.11.8-1.el8.noarch.rpm Signature
RPM for openSUSE Linux rabbitmq-server-3.11.8-1.suse.noarch.rpm Signature

Run RabbitMQ Server

Start the Server

The server is not started as a daemon by default when the RabbitMQ server package is installed. To start the daemon by default when the system boots, as an administrator run

chkconfig rabbitmq-server on

As an administrator, start and stop the server as usual, e.g. using service:

/sbin/service rabbitmq-server start

/sbin/service rabbitmq-server status

/sbin/service rabbitmq-server stop

If the service tool is not installed on the system, it can be installed using yum:

yum -y install initscripts

Configuring RabbitMQ

On most systems, a node should be able to start and run with all defaults. Please refer to the Configuration guide to learn more and Production Checklist for guidelines beyond development environments.

Note: the node is set up to run as system user rabbitmq. If location of the node database or the logs is changed, the files and directories must be owned by this user.

RabbitMQ nodes bind to ports (open server TCP sockets) in order to accept client and CLI tool connections. Other processes and tools such as SELinux may prevent RabbitMQ from binding to a port. When that happens, the node will fail to start.

CLI tools, client libraries and RabbitMQ nodes also open connections (client TCP sockets). Firewalls can prevent nodes and CLI tools from communicating with each other. Make sure the following ports are accessible:

  • 4369: epmd, a peer discovery service used by RabbitMQ nodes and CLI tools
  • 5672, 5671: used by AMQP 0-9-1 and 1.0 clients without and with TLS
  • 25672: used for inter-node and CLI tools communication (Erlang distribution server port) and is allocated from a dynamic range (limited to a single port by default, computed as AMQP port + 20000). Unless external connections on these ports are really necessary (e.g. the cluster uses federation or CLI tools are used on machines outside the subnet), these ports should not be publicly exposed. See networking guide for details.
  • 35672-35682: used by CLI tools (Erlang distribution client ports) for communication with nodes and is allocated from a dynamic range (computed as server distribution port + 10000 through server distribution port + 10010). See networking guide for details.
  • 15672: HTTP API clients, management UI and rabbitmqadmin (only if the management plugin is enabled)
  • 61613, 61614: STOMP clients without and with TLS (only if the STOMP plugin is enabled)
  • 1883, 8883: MQTT clients without and with TLS, if the MQTT plugin is enabled
  • 15674: STOMP-over-WebSockets clients (only if the Web STOMP plugin is enabled)
  • 15675: MQTT-over-WebSockets clients (only if the Web MQTT plugin is enabled)
  • 15692: Prometheus metrics (only if the Prometheus plugin is enabled)

It is possible to configure RabbitMQ to use different ports and specific network interfaces.

Default User Access

The broker creates a user guest with password guest. Unconfigured clients will in general use these credentials. By default, these credentials can only be used when connecting to the broker as localhost so you will need to take action before connecting from any other machine.

See the documentation on access control for information on how to create more users and delete the guest user.

Controlling System Limits on Linux

RabbitMQ installations running production workloads may need system limits and kernel parameters tuning in order to handle a decent number of concurrent connections and queues. The main setting that needs adjustment is the max number of open files, also known as ulimit -n. The default value on many operating systems is too low for a messaging broker (1024 on several Linux distributions). We recommend allowing for at least 65536 file descriptors for user rabbitmq in production environments. 4096 should be sufficient for many development workloads.

There are two limits in play: the maximum number of open files the OS kernel allows (fs.file-max) and the per-user limit (ulimit -n). The former must be higher than the latter.

With systemd (Recent Linux Distributions)

On distributions that use systemd, the OS limits are controlled via a configuration file at /etc/systemd/system/rabbitmq-server.service.d/limits.conf. For example, to set the max open file handle limit (nofile) to 64000:

[Service]
LimitNOFILE=64000

See systemd documentation to learn about the supported limits and other directives.

With Docker

To configure kernel limits for Docker contains, use the "default-ulimits" key in Docker daemon configuration file. The file has to be installed on Docker hosts at /etc/docker/daemon.json:

{
  "default-ulimits": {
    "nofile": {
      "Name": "nofile",
      "Hard": 64000,
      "Soft": 64000
    }
  }
}

Without systemd (Older Linux Distributions)

The most straightforward way to adjust the per-user limit for RabbitMQ on distributions that do not use systemd is to edit the /etc/default/rabbitmq-server (provided by the RabbitMQ Debian package) or rabbitmq-env.conf to invoke ulimit before the service is started.

ulimit -S -n 64000

This soft limit cannot go higher than the hard limit (which defaults to 4096 in many distributions). The hard limit can be increased via /etc/security/limits.conf. This also requires enabling the pam_limits.so module and re-login or reboot. Note that limits cannot be changed for running OS processes.

For more information about controlling fs.file-max with sysctl, please refer to the excellent Riak guide on open file limit tuning.

Verifying the Limit

RabbitMQ management UI displays the number of file descriptors available for it to use on the Overview tab.

rabbitmq-diagnostics status

includes the same value.

The following command

cat /proc/$RABBITMQ_BEAM_PROCESS_PID/limits

can be used to display effective limits of a running process. $RABBITMQ_BEAM_PROCESS_PID is the OS PID of the Erlang VM running RabbitMQ, as returned by rabbitmq-diagnostics status.

Configuration Management Tools

Configuration management tools (e.g. Chef, Puppet, BOSH) provide assistance with system limit tuning. Our developer tools guide lists relevant modules and projects.

Managing the Service

To start and stop the server, use the service tool. The service name is rabbitmq-server:

# stop the local node
sudo service rabbitmq-server stop

# start it back
sudo service rabbitmq-server start

service rabbitmq-server status will report service status as observed by systemd (or similar service manager):

# check on service status as observed by service manager
sudo service rabbitmq-server status

It will produce output similar to this:

Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status rabbitmq-server.service
● rabbitmq-server.service - RabbitMQ broker
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rabbitmq-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/rabbitmq-server.service.d
           └─limits.conf
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-05-22 10:21:32 UTC; 25s ago
 Main PID: 957 (beam.smp)
   Status: "Initialized"
   CGroup: /system.slice/rabbitmq-server.service
           ├─ 957 /usr/lib/erlang/erts-10.2/bin/beam.smp -W w -A 64 -MBas ageffcbf -MHas ageffcbf -MBlmbcs 512 -MHlmbcs 512 -MMmcs 30 -P 1048576 -t 5000000 -stbt db -zdbbl 128000 -K true -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /var/lib/rabbitmq -- ...
           ├─1411 /usr/lib/erlang/erts-10.2/bin/epmd -daemon
           ├─1605 erl_child_setup 400000
           ├─2860 inet_gethost 4
           └─2861 inet_gethost 4

Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##  ##
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##  ##      RabbitMQ 3.11.5. Copyright (c) 2007-2023 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL 2.0. Website: https://www.rabbitmq.com/
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ######  ##
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##########  Logs: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost.log
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost_upgrade.log
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: Starting broker...
Dec 26 10:21:32 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: systemd unit for activation check: "rabbitmq-server.service"
Dec 26 10:21:32 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started RabbitMQ broker.
Dec 26 10:21:32 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: completed with 6 plugins.

rabbitmqctl, rabbitmq-diagnostics, and other CLI tools will be available in PATH and can be invoked by a sudo-enabled user:

# checks if the local node is running and CLI tools can successfully authenticate with it
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics ping

# prints enabled components (applications), TCP listeners, memory usage breakdown, alarms
# and so on
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics status

# prints cluster membership information
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics cluster_status

# prints effective node configuration
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics environment

All rabbitmqctl commands will report an error if no node is running. See the CLI tools and Monitoring guides to learn more.

Log Files and Management

Server logs can be found under the configurable directory, which usually defaults to /var/log/rabbitmq when RabbitMQ is installed via a Linux package manager.

RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE can be used to override log directory location.

Assuming a systemd-based distribution, system service logs can be inspected using

journalctl --system

which requires superuser privileges. Its output can be filtered to narrow it down to RabbitMQ-specific entries:

sudo journalctl --system | grep rabbitmq

The output will look similar to this:

Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##  ##
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##  ##      RabbitMQ 3.11.5. Copyright (c) 2007-2023 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL 2.0. Website: https://www.rabbitmq.com/
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ######  ##
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##########  Logs: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost.log
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost_upgrade.log
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: Starting broker...
Dec 26 11:03:05 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: systemd unit for activation check: "rabbitmq-server.service"
Dec 26 11:03:06 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: completed with 6 plugins.

Log Rotation

The broker always appends to the log files, so a complete log history is retained.

logrotate is the recommended way of log file rotation and compression. By default, the package will set up logrotate to run weekly on files located in default /var/log/rabbitmq directory. Rotation configuration can be found in /etc/logrotate.d/rabbitmq-server.

Getting Help and Providing Feedback

If you have questions about the contents of this guide or any other topic related to RabbitMQ, don't hesitate to ask them on the RabbitMQ mailing list.

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