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Version: 4.1

Installing on RPM-based Linux (RHEL, CentOS Stream, Fedora, Amazon Linux 2023)

Overview​

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

The versions included into standard RPM-based distribution repositories can be 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 a set of repositores at *.rabbitmq.com.

There are two ways of installing these RPMs:

  • Installing the package using the *.rabbitmq.com dnf/yum repositories (this option is highly recommended)
  • Downloading the package and installing it with rpm. This option will require manual installation of all package dependencies and makes upgrades more difficult.

Some of the topics covered in this guide are:

and more.

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. Supported Erlang versions 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 Standard Red Hat, CentOS Stream, and CentOS-derivative repositories provide Erlang versions that are typically out of date and cannot be used to run latest RabbitMQ releases.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.
  • Fedora provides up-to-date Erlang packages
  • 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 repository, as described in its README.

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

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 dnf/yum Repositories from Team RabbitMQ​

This section will demonstrate how to set up a repository file to install RabbitMQ and Erlang from one of the *.rabbitmq.com dnf/yum repositories.

Import the Signing Keys​

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/3.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc'
## modern Erlang repository
rpm --import 'https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-erlang.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key'
## RabbitMQ server repository
rpm --import 'https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-server.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.

important

The contents of the repository file will vary slightly between distribution families. Make sure to use the appropriate tab below.

important

These repository mirrors only provide 64-bit x86 (amd64) packages of Erlang. 64-bit ARM (aarch64) Erlang packages must be downloaded from GitHub and installed with rpm directly as explained in the zero dependency Erlang RPM package README.

The contents of the file will vary slightly between distribution families:

  • Most recent distributions: modern Fedora Releases, Red Hat 9, CentOS Stream 9, Rocky Linux 9, Alma Linux 9
  • Older distribution: RHEL 8, Rocky Linux 8, Alma Linux 8, Amazon Linux 2023, older Fedora Releases

The following example sets up a repository that will install RabbitMQ and its Erlang dependency from a Cloudsmith mirror, and targets RHEL 9, CentOS Stream 9, Amazon Linux 2023, modern Fedora releases, Rocky Linux 9, Alma Linux 9, Oracle Linux 9.

These repository mirrors only provide 64-bit x86 (amd64) packages of Erlang.

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

##
## Zero dependency Erlang RPM
##

[modern-erlang]
name=modern-erlang-el9
# Use a set of mirrors maintained by the RabbitMQ core team.
# The mirrors have significantly higher bandwidth quotas.
baseurl=https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/$basearch
        https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-erlang.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
gpgcheck=1
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300
pkg_gpgcheck=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

[modern-erlang-noarch]
name=modern-erlang-el9-noarch
# Use a set of mirrors maintained by the RabbitMQ core team.
# The mirrors have significantly higher bandwidth quotas.
baseurl=https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/noarch
        https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/noarch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-erlang.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/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

[modern-erlang-source]
name=modern-erlang-el9-source
# Use a set of mirrors maintained by the RabbitMQ core team.
# The mirrors have significantly higher bandwidth quotas.
baseurl=https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/SRPMS
        https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/erlang/el/9/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-erlang.E495BB49CC4BBE5B.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/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


##
## RabbitMQ Server
##

[rabbitmq-el9]
name=rabbitmq-el9
baseurl=https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/$basearch
        https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-server.9F4587F226208342.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/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-el9-noarch]
name=rabbitmq-el9-noarch
baseurl=https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/noarch
        https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/noarch
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
# Cloudsmith's repository key and RabbitMQ package signing key
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-server.9F4587F226208342.key
       https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/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-el9-source]
name=rabbitmq-el9-source
baseurl=https://yum2.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/SRPMS
        https://yum1.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq/el/9/SRPMS
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/cloudsmith.rabbitmq-server.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

Install Packages with dnf (yum)​

Update package metadata:

dnf update -y

Next install dependencies from the standard repositories:

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
dnf install -y logrotate

Finally, install modern Erlang and RabbitMQ:

## install RabbitMQ and zero dependency Erlang
dnf install -y erlang rabbitmq-server

Package Version Locking in On RPM-based Distributions​

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 a Direct Download​

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

rpm --import https://github.com/rabbitmq/signing-keys/releases/download/3.0/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc

## install these dependencies from standard OS repositories
dnf install -y logrotate

# The RabbitMQ RPM package is suitable for both RHEL 9 (modern) and RHEL 8-based (older) distributions
dnf install -y rabbitmq-server-4.1.2-1.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
dnf install -y logrotate

# The RabbitMQ RPM package is suitable for both RHEL 9 (modern) and RHEL 8-based (older) distributions
dnf install -y rabbitmq-server-4.1.2-1.el8.noarch.rpm

How to Clean Local dnf Cache​

In some rare cases new versions available in RPM repositories will not be visible to dnf install even after running dnf update.

In this case, clearing the local cache may be necessary:

dnf clean metadata

dnf clean dbcache

dnf clean all

After clearing the cache, dnf will have to re-download all metadata from all repositories, including the standard ones for the distribution. This can take some time.

Direct Downloads​

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

DescriptionDownloadSignature
RPM for Fedora 38+, RHEL Linux 8.x and 9.x, CentOS Stream 9, Rocky Linux 9, Alma Linux 9, Amazon Linux 2023rabbitmq-server-4.1.2-1.el8.noarch.rpmSignature

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

systemctl enable rabbitmq-server

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

systemctl start rabbitmq-server

systemctl status  rabbitmq-server

systemctl stop rabbitmq-server

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 Deployment Guidelines 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. Refer to the Networking Guide for more details.

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

If LimitNOFILE is set to a value higher than 65536, the ERL_MAX_PORTS environment variable must be updated accordingly to increase a runtime limit.

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
    }
  }
}

If the limits above are set to a value higher than 65536, the ERL_MAX_PORTS environment variable must be updated accordingly to increase a runtime limit.

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.

If the limits above are set to a value higher than 65536, the ERL_MAX_PORTS environment variable must be updated accordingly to increase a runtime limit.

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

Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##  ##
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##  ##      RabbitMQ 4.1.2. Copyright (c) 2005-2025 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL 2.0. Website: https://www.rabbitmq.com/
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ######  ##
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: ##########  Logs: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost.log
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost_upgrade.log
Aug 26 10:21:30 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: Starting broker...
Aug 26 10:21:32 localhost.localdomain rabbitmq-server[957]: systemd unit for activation check: "rabbitmq-server.service"
Aug 26 10:21:32 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started RabbitMQ broker.
Aug 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:

Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##  ##
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##  ##      RabbitMQ 4.1.2. Copyright (c) 2005-2025 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##########  Licensed under the MPL 2.0. Website: https://www.rabbitmq.com/
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ######  ##
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: ##########  Logs: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost.log
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: /var/log/rabbitmq/rabbit@localhost_upgrade.log
Aug 26 11:03:04 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: Starting broker...
Aug 26 11:03:05 localhost rabbitmq-server[968]: systemd unit for activation check: "rabbitmq-server.service"
Aug 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.