Setting up RabbitMQ and its config files

This post is to document how to install rabbitMQ using the generic linux distribution that comes as a tar.gz package.

To proceed with the installation follow the below steps:
1- download latest RabbitMQ from pivotal: https://network.pivotal.io/products/pivotal-rabbitmq, lets assume we will work using pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.1

2- extract the downloaded file to the installation location the tar.gz package will be self contained except for erlang liberaries, you need to install erlang from epel erlang yum / dnf repositories.

2- Once installed, we need to edit some config files to allow the rabbitmq server to run:

${RABBITMQ_HOME}/sbin/rabbitmq-defaults :
we need to set the variable ${RABBITMQ_HOME}, this will automatically populate the rest of the variables:

[root@khofo02 sbin]# cat rabbitmq-defaults |grep -v "^#"
RABBITMQ_HOME=/root/pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.1/
SYS_PREFIX=${RABBITMQ_HOME}
ERL_DIR=
CLEAN_BOOT_FILE=start_clean
SASL_BOOT_FILE=start_sasl
BOOT_MODULE="rabbit"
CONFIG_FILE=${SYS_PREFIX}/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq
LOG_BASE=${SYS_PREFIX}/var/log/rabbitmq
MNESIA_BASE=${SYS_PREFIX}/var/lib/rabbitmq/mnesia
ENABLED_PLUGINS_FILE=${SYS_PREFIX}/etc/rabbitmq/enabled_plugins
PLUGINS_DIR="${RABBITMQ_HOME}/plugins"
IO_THREAD_POOL_SIZE=64
CONF_ENV_FILE=${SYS_PREFIX}/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf
[root@khofo02 sbin]#



${RABBITMQ_HOME}/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf :
We need to set the NODENAME env. variable, this is not mandatory, but it helps if we are going to run multiple RabbitMQ nodes on this host.
Also any other env. variable that needs to be defined can be placed in this file:
 
[root@khofo02 sbin]# cat ../etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf
#example rabbitmq-env.conf file entries
#Rename the node
NODENAME=rabbitx1
#Config file location and new filename without the config extention
#CONFIG_FILE=/root/pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.1/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq

[root@khofo02 sbin]#

Note that the CONFIG_FILE variable is already set in the rabbitmq-defaults, so we are commenting this out in the rabbitmq-env.conf.


Note that any reference to rabbitMQ config file is done without its .config extension, thus the variable will have a value:

ONFIG_FILE=/root/pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.1/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq


While the file on the system is:

/root/pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.1/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.config



${RABBITMQ_HOME}/etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.config :
This is the main config file for RabbitMQ, it will contain most of the configs for rabbitMQ and its plugins.
For this example we are putting configurations for management and stomp plugins.

[
    {rabbit, [{tcp_listeners, [5674]}, {loopback_users, []}]},
    {rabbitmq_management, [{listener, [{port,15674}, {ip, "0.0.0.0"}]}]},
    {rabbitmq_stomp, [{tcp_listeners, [{"0.0.0.0",61614}]},
              {default_user, [{login, "guest"},
                                      {passcode, "guest"}
                                     ]
                      },
                      {implicit_connect, true}
                     ]}
  ].

Here we are changing the default port from 5672 to 5674 using the rabbit tcp_listeners parameter.
Since the default for the guest user it only to login locally, we set the loopback_users parameter to an empty string "[]" this will allow guest to login from all interfaces.

Also to force the management plugin to listen on all interfaces we use the ip parameter set to 0.0.0.0, also the port number is changed to 15674 using listener port parameter.

For stomp we are defining a set of parameters:

• tcp_listener on all interfaces and port is 61614, default port is 61613.
• default_user: login as guest, password as guest.
• implicit_connect is set to true.

Now we are ready to enable the plugins that we are going to use.
To do this we go to ${RABBITMQ_HOME}/sbin and run the commands below.
it will git output similar to the below:


[root@khofo02 sbin]# ./rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
The following plugins have been enabled:
  mochiweb
  webmachine
  rabbitmq_web_dispatch
  amqp_client
  rabbitmq_management_agent
  rabbitmq_management

Applying plugin configuration to rabbitx1@khofo02... failed.
 * Could not contact node rabbitx1@khofo02.
   Changes will take effect at broker restart.
 * Options: --online  - fail if broker cannot be contacted.
            --offline - do not try to contact broker.
[root@khofo02 sbin]# ./rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_stomp
The following plugins have been enabled:
  rabbitmq_stomp

Applying plugin configuration to rabbitx1@khofo02... failed.
 * Could not contact node rabbitx1@khofo02.
   Changes will take effect at broker restart.
 * Options: --online  - fail if broker cannot be contacted.
            --offline - do not try to contact broker.
[root@khofo02 sbin]#

Once we enable the plugins, we can start rabbitMQ server, from ${RABBITMQ_HOME}/sbin run:

[root@khofo02 sbin]# ./rabbitmq-server -detached
Warning: PID file not written; -detached was passed.
[root@khofo02 sbin]#

RabbitMQ logs at: ${RABBITMQ_HOME}/var/log/rabbitmq/rabbitx1.log
Where rabbitx1 is the name we gave above for the rabbit instance.
If all goes well, the log will looks like this:
[root@khofo02 sbin]# tail "/root/springsource/pivotal-rabbitmq-server-3.5.6//var/log/rabbitmq/rabbitx1.log"

=INFO REPORT==== 26-Jul-2016::08:28:38 ===
Server startup complete; 7 plugins started.
 * rabbitmq_management
 * rabbitmq_web_dispatch
 * webmachine
 * mochiweb
 * rabbitmq_management_agent
 * rabbitmq_stomp
 * amqp_client
[root@khofo02 sbin]#

Finally to stop RabbitMQ, we run the command:

[root@khofo02 sbin]# ./rabbitmqctl stop
Stopping and halting node rabbitx1@khofo02 ...
[root@khofo02 sbin]#

I will discuss the clustering of RabbitMQ in another post.