Installing Prerequistes

Launching the server installer (vfabric-rabbitmq-server-2.4.1.exe) will check for the presence of the necessary prequisites for running vFabric RabbitMQ. These are a suitable version of Erlang and a 1.6 version of a JRE or JDK.

If any of these are found not to be installed the installer will offer to navigate your browser to the relevant download locations (see footnote #1).

When installing the prerequsisites, it is advisable to accept the default options presented by their respective installers. You will need to relaunch the vFabric RabbitMQ installer after the prerequisites are installed.

Installing RabbitMQ Server

The Windows installer will guide you through the installation of vFabric RabbitMQ 2.4.1. It is recommended to accepting the default options presented by the installer unless you have a good reason not to do so.

Launch the server installer

Begin the installation

Choose which components to install

It is recommended that you keep the default selection and install RabbitMQ as a Windows service.

Choose the install location

Wait while components are installed

Installation complete

Verifying the Installation

If you installed vFabric RabbitMQ to run as a Windows service you can check the status of RabbitMQ through the services control panel.

Go to Start > Run (or press Windows-R) and then type: services.msc and press enter.

Scroll down the list of services until you find the entry for RabbitMQ. In the status column, you should see the text "Started".

If you want to check the status of RabbitMQ using the command line open a command prompt and change directory to your RabbitMQ installation (see footnote #2).

Type the following command:

rabbitmqctl status
          

You should see something like the following output:

Status of node 'rabbit@host' ...
  [{pid,...},
   {running_applications,[{rabbit,"RabbitMQ","2.4.1"},
                          {os_mon,"..."},
                          {sasl,"..."},
                          {mnesia,"..."},
                          {stdlib,"..."},
                          {kernel,"..."}]},
  {nodes,{disc,['rabbit@host']}]},
  {running_nodes,['rabbit@host']}]
           

If you have problems please read the troubleshooting section of this guide.

Finding Command Scripts and App Data

Commands for RabbitMQ Server

Within the rabbitmq_server-2.4.1\sbin directory are scripts that can be used to control the RabbitMQ server. Note that the RabbitMQ server can be run as either an application or service.

• rabbitmq-server.bat starts the broker as an application.
• rabbitmq-service.bat manages the service and starts the broker.
• rabbitmqctl.bat manages a running broker.

Note: On later versions of Window you need to run these scripts from a command prompt with elevated privileges.

Find Commands Easily

Set up the system path so you can find the server and sbin directory easily.

• Create a system environment variable (e.g. RABBITMQ_SERVER) for "C:\Program Files\RabbitMQ\rabbitmq_server-2.4.1". Adjust this if you put rabbitmq_server-2.4.1 elsewhere or if you upgrade versions.
• Append the literal string ";%RABBITMQ_SERVER%\sbin" to your system path environment variable.

Now you can run rabbitmq commands from any (administrator) Command Prompt.

You will need to navigate to rabbitmq_server-2.4.1\sbin to run commands if your system path does not contain the RabbitMQ sbin directory.

Finding Application Data

By default, the RabbitMQ logs and Mnesia database are stored in the current user's Application Data directory e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data or C:\Documents and Settings\User\AppData\Roaming (Windows Vista).

Execute echo %APPDATA% at a Command Prompt to find this directory. Alternatively, Start > Run %APPDATA% will open this folder.

Running RabbitMQ Server as an Application

The application is started by the rabbitmq-server.bat script in sbin.

Customise RabbitMQ Server Environment Variables

Environment variable defaults are set within the rabbitmq-server.bat file. You may need to customise environment variables for your installation.

Start the Broker as an Application

Run the command

rabbitmq-server -detached

Alternatively, you can double-click the rabbitmq-server.bat file in Windows Explorer.

If you start by double-clicking, a Command Prompt window opens, displays a banner message, reports on progress in the startup sequence, and concludes with "broker running". This shows that the RabbitMQ broker has been started successfully.

If you started without the -detached option, e.g. by double-clicking, you will need a second command prompt window to control the application cleanly. Closing the original command prompt will forcefully shut down a server started this way.

Stop or Manage the Broker

rabbitmq-server only starts the broker. Use rabbitmqctl commands to manage the broker.

Running RabbitMQ Server as a Service

The service will run in the security context of the system account without the need for a user to be logged in on a console. This is normally more appropriate for production use. The server should not be run as a service and application simultaneously.

The service runs using the rabbitmq-service.bat script in sbin.

Customise RabbitMQ Service Environment Variables

Note: After setting environment variables, you may need to install the service again.

The rabbitmq-service.bat script recognises many of the same environment variables as rabbitmq-server.bat, as well as a few additional service environment variables.

Install the Service

Install the service by running

rabbitmq-service install

A service with the name defined by RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME should now appear in the Windows Services control panel (Start > Run services.msc).

Managing the Service

To manage the service (install, remove, start, stop, enable, disable), use rabbitmq-service.bat commands. Refer to the service guide for more information and troubleshooting guidance. You can also use the Windows Services panel (services.msc) to perform some of the same functions as the service script.

Start the Broker as a Service

To start the broker, execute

rabbitmq-service start

If the output from this command is "Service RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME started", then the service was started correctly.

Confirm the service named RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME reports a "Started" status in Services:
Start > Run services.msc.

Manage the Broker

To manage the broker use rabbitmqctl commands.

Managing RabbitMQ Server

To stop the broker or check its status, use rabbitmqctl.bat in sbin (as an administrator).

Synchronise Erlang Cookies (when running a Windows Service)

Erlang Security Cookies used by the service account and the user running rabbitmqctl.bat must be synchronised for rabbitmqctl.bat to function.

To ensure Erlang cookie files contain the same string, copy the .erlang.cookie file from the Windows directory (normally C:\WINDOWS\.erlang.cookie) to replace the user .erlang.cookie. The user cookie will be in the user's home directory (%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%), e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\User\.erlang.cookie.

Stopping the Broker

Use rabbitmqctl stop.

Checking the Broker Status

Use rabbitmqctl status. All rabbitmqctl commands will report the node absence if no broker is running (i.e. nodedown).

More info on rabbitmqctl commands

More info on administration

Logging

Output from the server is sent to a RABBITMQ_NODENAME.log file in the RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE directory. Additional log data is written to RABBITMQ_NODENAME-sasl.log.

The log files are created afresh every time the broker starts. In order to retain a complete log history the startup scripts append the contents to the corresponding .1 files prior to starting the broker.

You can rotate logs using rabbitmqctl rotate_logs.

> cd C:\Program Files\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-2.4.1\

> cd C:\Program Files (x86)\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-2.4.1\

> cd sbin

Installing RabbitMQ Server

Register with RHN

rhn_register

On RHEL 6, you also need to edit /etc/yum/repos.d/rhel-beta.repo. On each repository:

• change enable to 1 from 0
• change https to http

Setup the EPEL repository

Enable EPEL on your machine. Instructions are in the EPEL FAQ.

Install Erlang

On RHEL 5, and derived distributions, the version of Erlang in the EPEL repository (R12B-5) is relatively old. Although RabbitMQ will run on this version, performance may be impaired relative to more recent versions and certain non-core features are not supported (e.g. management plug-in). We recommend installing the most recent stable version of Erlang, which is made available by the owner of the EPEL Erlang package, as follows:

Set up the fedorapeople repository. As root, invoke:
wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/epel-erlang.repo http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/peter/erlang/epel-erlang.repo

Install (or update) Erlang with:
yum install erlang

Install Java

Find and install a 1.6 version JRE or JDK.

Install the vFabric EULA

rpm -Uvf vfabric-eula-5.0.0-10.noarch.rpm

Install vFabric RabbitMQ Server

rpm -Uvf vfabric-rabbitmq-server-2.4.1-1.fedora.noarch.rpm

Running RabbitMQ Server

Customise RabbitMQ Environment Variables

The server should start using defaults. However, you can customise the RabbitMQ environment if you so wish. Also, see how to configure components.

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 using /sbin/service rabbitmq-server stop/start/etc.

Note: The server is set up to run as system user rabbitmq. If you change the location of the Mnesia database or the logs, you must ensure the files are owned by this user (and also update the environment variables).

Manage the Server

See the generic Unix section for info on rabbitmqctl commands and logging.

Running RabbitMQ Server

Customise RabbitMQ Environment Variables

Within the sbin directory is a shell script rabbitmq-server which uses default values. You can customise the RabbitMQ environment. Also see how to configure components.

Note: If the directories RABBITMQ_MNESIA_BASE and RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE do not exist the server will attempt to create them. The server needs write permission at the configured locations.

Start the Server

Invoke the rabbitmq-server shell script as the user you wish to run the server as. Be sure that the user's environment has a JAVA_HOME environment variable set pointing to a valid 1.6 Java runtime on your system. This displays a banner message, and reports on progress in the startup sequence, concluding with the message "broker running", indicating that the RabbitMQ broker has been started successfully.

You can also start the server in "detached" mode with rabbitmq-server -detached, in which case the server process runs in the background.

Managing RabbitMQ Server

To stop the server or check its status, etc., you can use rabbitmqctl (as an administrator). It should be available on the path. All rabbitmqctl commands will report the node absence if no broker is running.

• Use rabbitmqctl stop to stop the server. Alternatively, just terminate the Erlang process.
• Use rabbitmqctl status to check whether it is running.

More on rabbitmqctl commands

More on administration

Logging

Output from the server is sent to a RABBITMQ_NODENAME.log file in the RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE directory. Additional log data is written to RABBITMQ_NODENAME-sasl.log.

These log files are created afresh every time the broker starts. In order to retain a complete log history the startup scripts append the contents to the corresponding .1 files prior to starting the broker.

You can use the logrotate program to do all necessary rotation and compression, and you can change it. By default, this script runs weekly on files located in default /var/log/rabbitmq directory. See /etc/logrotate.d/rabbitmq-server to configure logrotate.