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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 (RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE).

RabbitMQ is included in standard Fedora and RHEL repositories. However, the versions included are usually outdated and out of support.

There are two ways to install the most recent version of RabbitMQ:

• Installing the package using Yum repositories on Package Cloud or Bintray (this option is highly recommended)
• Downloading the package and installing it with rpm. This option will require manual installation of all package dependencies.

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

• Package installation from Yum repositories on Package Cloud or Bintray
• How to install a latest supported Erlang/OTP version
• Package dependencies
• Supported distributions
• Privilege requirements
• Package downloads
• How to manage the service
• How to inspect node and service logs

and more.

Overview

The package is distributed via Yum repositories on PackageCloud and Bintray.

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 or Bintray.

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

Supported Distributions

Below is a list of supported RPM-based distributions as of RabbitMQ 3.6.3:

• CentOS 8.x, 7.x and 6.x (there are three separate RPM packages: one for 8.x series, one for 7.x and one for 6.x)
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 8.x, 7.x and 6.x (same packages as for CentOS)
• Fedora 28 through 30 (use the CentOS 8.x or 7.x package)

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. There are three commonly used sources for Erlang packages on RPM-based distributions.

• Team RabbitMQ produces a package stripped down to only provide those components needed to run RabbitMQ. It might be easiest to use if installing Erlang's dependencies is proving difficult.
• Erlang Solutions produces packages that are usually reasonably up to date and involve installation of a potentially excessive list of dependencies.
• EPEL ("Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux"); part of the Red Hat/Fedora organisation, provides many additional packages, including Erlang. These are the most official packages but tend to be out of date. The packages are split into many small pieces.
• openSUSE produces Erlang packages for each distribution (openSUSE and SLES)

Zero-dependency Erlang from RabbitMQ

Zero dependency Erlang RPM package for running RabbitMQ can be installed via Yum repositories on Package Cloud and Bintray as well as a direct download.

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

Erlang Yum Repository from Erlang Solutions

Follow the instructions under "Installation using repository" at Erlang Solutions. Note that Erlang Solutions tend to provide cutting edge Erlang versions that may or may not be supported by RabbitMQ. Version locking (see below) is recommended when Erlang installed using this option.

Monolithic Erlang Package from Erlang Solutions

Download and install the appropriate esl-erlang RPM from Erlang Solutions.

Erlang package from the EPEL Repository

Follow the steps in the EPEL FAQ to enable EPEL on the target machine, then run the following command as root:

yum install erlang

Package Version Locking in Yum

yum version locking plugin is recommended to prevent unwanted Erlang upgrades. This is highly recommended when Erlang is installed via the Erlang Solutions repository.

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:

• erlang: a supported version of Erlang can installed from a number of repositories
• socat
• logrotate

Install RabbitMQ Server

Using PackageCloud Yum Repository

A Yum repository with RabbitMQ packages is available from PackageCloud.

A quick way to install is to use a Package Cloud-provided script. Package Cloud also can be used to install a recent Erlang version via yum.

There are more installation options available:

• Using PackageCloud Chef cookbook
• Using PackageCloud Puppet module
• Manually

See PackageCloud RabbitMQ repository instructions.

Package Cloud signs distributed packages using their own GPG keys. As of late 2018 Package Cloud is undergoing a signing key migration. Instead of relying on a "master key", projects will migrate to use repository-specific signing keys. Before the migration is completed, both old and new key must be imported for forward compatibility:

# import the new PackageCloud key that will be used starting December 1st, 2018 (GMT)
rpm --import https://packagecloud.io/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/gpgkey

# import the old PackageCloud key that will be discontinued on December 1st, 2018 (GMT)
rpm --import https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key

After importing both keys please follow the Package Cloud repository setup instructions.

Using Bintray Yum Repository

A Yum repository with RabbitMQ packages is available from Bintray. The package page provides a repository setup help section.

Bintray also can be used to install a recent Erlang version via yum.

Before the Yum repository can be used, RabbitMQ signing key must be imported first. This makes RPM tools trust the signature on the packages provided in the repository. To do so, run rpm --import as a superuser:

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

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 7 and 8 vs. CentOS 6 vs. OpenSUSE).

The following example sets up a repository that will installRabbitMQ 3.8 and targets CentOS 8:

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.8.x/el/8/
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

On CentOS 7 the baseurl line would be slightly different:

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.8.x/el/7/
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

Same for CentOS 6:

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.8.x/el/6/
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

The following example targets OpenSUSE:

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.8.x/opensuse/42.1/
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

The following example targets SLES 11.x:

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.8.x/sles/11
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

The following example sets up a repository that will install RabbitMQ 3.7 on CentOS 7. Note that RabbitMQ 3.7 goes out of support in 2020.

[bintray-rabbitmq-server]
name=bintray-rabbitmq-rpm
baseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/rabbitmq/rpm/rabbitmq-server/v3.7.x/el/7/
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

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
# This example assumes the CentOS 8 version of the package.
# For CentOS 7, replace "el8" with "el7".
yum install rabbitmq-server-3.8.5-1.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
# This example assumes the CentOS 8 version of the package.
# For CentOS 7, replace "el8" with "el7".
yum install rabbitmq-server-3.8.5-1.el8.noarch.rpm

Download the Server

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

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:

/sbin/service rabbitmq-server start

/sbin/service rabbitmq-server stop

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 4096

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.

rabbitmqctl 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 rabbitmqctl 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 2018-12-26 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 3.7.16. Copyright (c) 2007-2020 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.
Dec 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL.  See 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 effective node configuration
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics environment

# performs a more extensive health check of the local node
sudo rabbitmq-diagnostics node_health_check

All rabbitmqctl commands will report the node absence if no broker is running.

See the CLI tools guide 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 3.7.16. Copyright (c) 2007-2020 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.
Dec 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL.  See 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.