RabbitMQ comes with default built-in settings which will most likely be sufficient for running your RabbitMQ server effectively. If it runs fine, then you probably don't need any configuration at all.
If you have other constraints, RabbitMQ provides two general ways to customise the server:
The active configuration can be verified in the startup banner, e.g. the active configuration file:
config file(s) : /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.configThis may appear on the console or in a file, depending on how the broker was started:
On Unix-based systems (including Linux, MacOSX) you can create/edit rabbitmq-env.conf to define environment variables. Its location is not configurable (unlike rabbitmq.config).
Use the standard environment variable names (but drop the RABBITMQ_ prefix) e.g.
#example rabbitmq-env.conf file entries #Rename the node NODENAME=bunny #Config file location and new filename bunnies.config CONFIG_FILE=/etc/rabbitmq/testdir/bunniesMore info on using rabbitmq-env.conf
If you need to customise names, ports, locations, it is easiest to configure environment variables in the Windows dialogue: Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables.
Create or edit the system variable name and value. For environment changes to take effect, open a new Command Prompt, then restart the broker or re-install the service.
RabbitMQ environment variable names have the prefix RABBITMQ_. A typical variable called RABBITMQ_var_name is set as follows:
In this way, variables set in the shell environment take priority over variables set in rabbitmq-env.conf, which in turn over-ride RabbitMQ built-in defaults.
It is unlikely you will need to set any of these environment variables. If you have non-standard requirements, then RabbitMQ environment variables include, but are not limited to:
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| RABBITMQ_NODE_IP_ADDRESS | the empty string - meaning bind to all network interfaces. | Change this if you only want to bind to one network interface. |
| RABBITMQ_NODE_PORT | 5672 | |
| RABBITMQ_NODENAME |
|
The node name should be unique per erlang-node-and-machine combination. To run multiple nodes, see the clustering guide. |
| RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME | Windows Service: RabbitMQ | The name of the installed service. This will appear in services.msc. |
| RABBITMQ_CONSOLE_LOG | Windows Service: |
Set this variable to new or reuse
to redirect console output from the server to a file named
%RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME%.debug in the
default RABBITMQ_BASE directory.
|
| RABBITMQ_CTL_ERL_ARGS | None | Parameters for the erl command used when invoking rabbitmqctl. This should be overridden for debugging purposes only. |
| RABBITMQ_SERVER_ERL_ARGS |
|
Standard parameters for the erl command used when invoking the RabbitMQ Server. This should be overridden for debugging purposes only. |
| RABBITMQ_SERVER_START_ARGS | None | Extra parameters for the erl command used when invoking the RabbitMQ Server. This will not override RABBITMQ_SERVER_ERL_ARGS. |
In addition, there are several environment variables which tell RabbitMQ where to locate its database, log files, plugins, configuration etc.
Other variables upon which RabbitMQ depends are:
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| HOSTNAME |
|
The name of the current machine |
| COMPUTERNAME | Windows: localhost | The name of the current machine |
| ERLANG_SERVICE_MANAGER_PATH | Windows Service: %ERLANG_HOME%\erts-x.x.x\bin | This path is the location of erlsrv.exe, the Erlang service wrapper script. |
The configuration file rabbitmq.config allows the RabbitMQ core application, Erlang services and RabbitMQ plugins to be configured. It is a standard Erlang configuration file, documented on the Erlang Config Man Page.
An example configuration file follows:
[
{mnesia, [{dump_log_write_threshold, 1000}]},
{rabbit, [{tcp_listeners, [5673]}]}
].
This example will alter the dump_log_write_threshold for mnesia (increasing from the default of 100), and alter the port RabbitMQ listens on from 5672 to 5673.
This configuration file is not the same as rabbitmq-env.conf, which can be used to set environment variables on non-windows systems. A future release of RabbitMQ will unify the two configuration mechanisms.
The location of these files is distribution-specific. By default, they are not created, but expect to be located in the following places on each platform:
If rabbitmq-env.conf doesn't exist, it can be created manually in the default location only. It is not used on Windows systems.
If rabbitmq.config doesn't exist, it can be created manually. Set the RABBITMQ_CONFIG_FILE environment variable if you change the location. The Erlang runtime automatically appends the .config extension to the value of this variable.
Restart the server after changes. Windows service users need to take additional steps when changing plugins.
Many users of RabbitMQ never need to change any of these values, and some are fairly obscure. However, for completeness they are all listed here.
| Key | Default value | Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| tcp_listeners | [5672] | List of ports on which to listen for AMQP connections (without SSL). Can contain integers (meaning "listen on all interfaces") or tuples such as {"127.0.0.1", 5672} to listen on a single interface. |
| ssl_listeners | [] | As above, for SSL connections. |
| ssl_options | [] | SSL configuration. See the SSL documentation. |
| vm_memory_high_watermark | 0.4 | Memory threshold at which the flow control is triggered. See the memory-based flow control documentation. |
| disk_free_limit | 1000000000 | Disk free space limit of the partition on which RabbitMQ is storing data. When available disk space falls below this limit, flow control is triggered. The value may be set relative to the total amount of RAM (e.g. {mem_relative, 1.0}). The value may also be set to an integer number of bytes. By default free disk space must exceed 1GB. See the memory-based flow control documentation. |
| log_levels | [{connection, info}] |
Controls the granularity of logging. The value is a list
of log event category and log level pairs.
The level can be one of 'none' (no events are logged), 'error' (only errors are logged), 'warning' (only errors and warning are logged), or 'info' (errors, warnings and informational messages are logged). At present there is just one category defined - 'connection', for all events relating to network connections. Other, currently uncategorised, events are always logged. |
| frame_max | 131072 | Maximum permissible size of a frame (in bytes) to negotiate with clients. Setting to 0 means "unlimited" but will trigger a bug in some QPid clients. Setting a larger value may improve throughput; setting a smaller value may improve latency. |
| default_vhost | <<"/">> | Virtual host to create when RabbitMQ creates a new database from scratch. The exchange amq.rabbitmq.log will exist in this virtual host. |
| default_user | <<"guest">> | User name to create when RabbitMQ creates a new database from scratch. |
| default_pass | <<"guest">> | Password for the default user. |
| default_user_tags | [administrator] | Tags for the default user. |
| default_permissions | [<<".*">>, <<".*">>, <<".*">>] | Permissions to assign to the default user when creating it. |
| cluster_nodes | [] | Set this to cause clustering to happen automatically. |
| server_properties | [] | List of key-value pairs to announce to clients on connection. |
| collect_statistics | none |
Statistics collection mode. Primarily relevant for the
management plugin. Options are:
|
| collect_statistics_interval | 5000 | Statistics collection interval in milliseconds. Primarily relevant for the management plugin. |
| auth_mechanisms | ['PLAIN', 'AMQPLAIN'] | SASL authentication mechanisms to offer to clients. |
| auth_backends | [rabbit_auth_backend_internal] | List of authentication databases to use. Other databases than rabbit_auth_backend_internal are available through plugins. |
| delegate_count | 16 | Number of delegate processes to use for intra-cluster communication. On a machine which has a very large number of cores and is also part of a cluster, you may wish to increase this value. |
| trace_vhosts | [] | Used internally by the tracer. You shouldn't change this. |
| tcp_listen_options | [binary, {packet, raw},
{reuseaddr, true},
{backlog, 128},
{nodelay, true},
{exit_on_close, false}]
|
Default socket options. You probably don't want to change this. |
| hipe_compile | false |
Set to true to precompile parts of RabbitMQ
with the High Performance Erlang compiler. This will
increase the message rate that the server can handle,
while also increasing startup time.
You might see 20-50% better performance at the cost of approximately 1 minute delay at startup. These figures are highly workload- and hardware-dependent. HiPE support may not be compiled into your Erlang installation. If it is not, enabling this option will just cause a warning message to be displayed and startup will proceed as normal. For example, Debian / Ubuntu users will need to install the erlang-base-hipe package. HiPE is not available at all on some platforms, notably including Windows. This option should be considered experimental. If your Erlang VM segfaults, disable this option again. |
| msg_store_index_module | rabbit_msg_store_ets_index | Implementation module for queue indexing. You probably don't want to change this. |
| backing_queue_module | rabbit_variable_queue | Implementation module for queue contents. You probably don't want to change this. |
| msg_store_file_size_limit | 16777216 | Tunable value for the persister. You almost certainly should not change this. |
| queue_index_max_journal_entries | 262144 | Tunable value for the persister. You almost certainly should not change this. |
In addition, many plugins can have sections in the configuration file, with names of the form rabbitmq_plugin. See the plugins page for more information.