Installation from a complete bundle

The bundle zip file contains all the files listed in the next section, including an Erlang system installer and the RabbitMQ broker binary distribution, as well as an archive of the Java librabbitmq client library.

Installation from separate components

• Install a recent version of Erlang. Any recent version should work, but we are developing against Erlang R11B-5 on Windows, which can be downloaded from http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_win32_R11B-5.exe
• Download rabbitmq-server-version.zip, where version is the version of RabbitMQ Server you want to install.
• Contained in the zip file is a directory named rabbitmq_server-version. You can either extract this folder into C:\Program Files\erl5.5.5\lib (or if you use a different Erlang version, the corresponding lib directory) or extract it elsewhere and set the environment variable ERLANG_HOME to point to your Erlang directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\erl5.5.5).
• Within the sbin directory is a file rabbitmq-server.bat which may need customisation for your installation, especially if you use a different version of Erlang. Environment variables set within the batch file are

  ERLANG_HOME

  Set this to the base directory of your Erlang installation, e.g. C:\Program Files\erl5.5.5. The RabbitMQ batch file expects the file bin\erl.exe to be present at this location. The default setting determines the base directory from the script location, which will work in most cases.

  RABBITMQ_BASE

  Defaults to the directory RabbitMQ in the user's application data directory, e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\RabbitMQ. Under Windows Vista the location would be slightly different, e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\User\AppData\Roaming\RabbitMQ This is the base directory containing sub-directories for the RabbitMQ Server's database and log files. Alternatively, set RABBITMQ_MNESIA_BASE and RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE individually.

  RABBITMQ_MNESIA_BASE

  Defaults to %RABBITMQ_BASE%\db. Set this to the directory where Mnesia database files should be placed.

  RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE

  Defaults to %RABBITMQ_BASE%\log. Log files generated by the server will be placed in this directory.

  RABBITMQ_NODENAME

  Defaults to rabbit. This can be useful if you want to run more than one node per machine - RABBITMQ_NODENAME should be unique per erlang-node-and-machine combination. See clustering on a single machine for more.

  RABBITMQ_NODE_IP_ADDRESS

  Defaults to 0.0.0.0. This can be changed if you only want to bind to one network interface. Please note that Windows 2000 (and maybe earlier versions) do not understand "0.0.0.0" and will need to have this set explicitly.

  RABBITMQ_NODE_PORT

  Defaults to 5672.

  RABBITMQ_CLUSTER_CONFIG_FILE

  Defaults to %RABBITMQ_BASE%\rabbitmq_cluster.config. If this file is present it is used by the server to auto-configure a RabbitMQ cluster. See the clustering guide for details.

Running the Server as an Application

Currently, it's sufficient to change directory to rabbitmq_server-version\sbin and double-click the rabbitmq-server.bat file.

The shell window that results 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. To shut down the server, close the shell window. Alternatively, use the rabbitmqctl stop command.

Running the Server as a Service

The server can be run as a service instead of an application. The server will run in the security context of the system account, without the need for a user to be logged in on a console. The server should not be run as a service and application simultaneously.

• The rabbitmq-service.bat script in the sbin directory is used to manage the service. The rabbitmq-service.bat script accepts the same environment variables as rabbitmq-server.bat, except ERLANG_HOME. Configure the following additional variables:

  ERLANG_SERVICE_MANAGER_PATH

  The default value of this path is C:\Program Files\erl5.5.5\erts-5.5.5\bin. The given path must contain the erlsrv.exe Erlang service wrapper script.

  RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME

  This name will appear in the list of services reported by the operating system.

  RABBITMQ_CONSOLE_LOG

  Set this varable to new or reuse to have the console output from the server redirected to a file named RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME.debug in the default RABBITMQ_BASE directory. If RABBITMQ_CONSOLE_LOG is set to new then a new file will be created each time the service starts. If RABBITMQ_CONSOLE_LOG is set to reuse then the file will be overwritten each time the service starts. If RABBITMQ_CONSOLE_LOG is unset then console output from the server will be discarded.

• Open a command shell (cmd.exe) in the sbin directory. Install the service by executing

  rabbitmq-service.bat install

• The service will now appear in the services control panel. Execute

  rabbitmq-service.bat start

  to start the server. If the output from this command is "Service RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME started", then the service was started correctly. If the output reads "The process terminated unexpectedly" instead, then the service did not start correctly. Check that the environmental variables are set correctly.
• Confirm that the service list in the operating system service list (services.msc) reports a "Started" status for the value of RABBITMQ_SERVICENAME.

Refer to the service guide for a complete description of rabbitmq-service.bat arguments.

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 easily write your own log rotation script using the rotate_logs_all command in rabbitmq-multi.bat or the rotate_logs command in rabbitmqctl.bat if you want to perform log rotation selectively.

Installation Instructions

• Install rabbitmq-server_version_all.deb (which you can download by hand, or by using our APT repository). The server should start with appropriate defaults. Note that the package depends on erlang-base packages, so if you use apt on a Debian distribution that has erlang-base packages available, all dependencies should be properly met.
• To adjust the settings used for starting the server, edit /etc/default/rabbitmq, setting environment variables as described in the Generic Unix section below. You can additionally set NODE_COUNT to define the number of nodes to run on a single machine.

Running the Server

The server is started as a daemon by default when the RabbitMQ Server package is installed. Start and stop the server as usual for Debian using invoke-rc.d rabbitmq-server stop/start/etc.

The server is set up to run as system user rabbitmq. This means that if you change the location of the Mnesia database or logs as described below, you must ensure the files are owned by this user.

The startup script waits for a limited amount of time, 30 seconds by default, for the broker nodes to start. When that time is exceeded a TIMEOUT is reported. The cause of this could be a misconfiguration or other error. However, it is also possible that the node simply is taking a long time to start up, perhaps because the machine it is running on is heavily loaded, or there are many persisted messages or durable queues and exchanges that need to be recovered. For that reason the timeout can be adjusted by setting MULTI_START_ARGS to "-maxwait timeout_in_seconds" in /etc/default/rabbitmq.

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 use logrotate program to do all the necessary rotation and compression (when needed). The script runs weekly, but you can easily change that. By default logrotate will handle files located in default /var/log/rabbitmq directory. See /etc/logrotate.d/rabbitmq-server for default logrotate configuration file.

Installation Instructions

• Install rabbitmq-server-version-noarch.rpm (which you can download by hand at our download page). Note that the package depends on erlang package(s). We strongly recommend using your distribution's packaged version of Erlang to run the server. See EPEL if there is no official erlang package for your distribution.
• To adjust the settings used for starting the server, edit /etc/default/rabbitmq, setting environment variables as described in the Generic Unix section below. You can additionally set NODE_COUNT to define the number of nodes to run on a single machine.

Running the Server

The server is started as a daemon by default when the RabbitMQ Server package is installed. Start and stop the server as usual using invoke-rc.d rabbitmq-server stop/start/etc.

The server is set up to run as system user rabbitmq. This means that if you change the location of the Mnesia database or logs as described below, you must ensure the files are owned by this user.

The startup script waits for a limited amount of time, 30 seconds by default, for the broker nodes to start. When that time is exceeded a TIMEOUT is reported. The cause of this could be a misconfiguration or other error. However, it is also possible that the node simply is taking a long time to start up, perhaps because the machine it is running on is heavily loaded, or there are many persisted messages or durable queues and exchanges that need to be recovered. For that reason the timeout can be adjusted by setting MULTI_START_ARGS to "-maxwait timeout_in_seconds" in /etc/default/rabbitmq.

Logging

Logging uses logrotate script in the same way as for Debian GNU

Installation Instructions

• Install a recent version of Erlang.
• Download rabbitmq-server-generic-unix-version.tar.gz, where version is the version of RabbitMQ Server you want to install.
• Contained in the tarball is a directory named rabbitmq-server-generic-unix-version. You can either extract the tarball into /usr/lib/erlang/lib directory (or wherever your Erlang installation places its application and library directory) or extract it elsewhere and set the environment variable ERLANG_HOME to point to your Erlang directory (e.g. /usr/lib/erlang).
• Within the sbin directory is a shell script rabbitmq-server which may need customisation for your installation. Environment variables available for configuration are

  RABBITMQ_MNESIA_BASE

  Defaults to /var/lib/rabbitmq/mnesia. Set this to the directory where Mnesia database files should be placed.

  RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE

  Defaults to /var/log/rabbitmq. Log files generated by the server will be placed in this directory.

  RABBITMQ_NODENAME

  Defaults to rabbit. This can be useful if you want to run more than one node per machine - RABBITMQ_NODENAME should be unique per erlang-node-and-machine combination. See clustering on a single machine for more.

  RABBITMQ_NODE_IP_ADDRESS

  Defaults to 0.0.0.0. This can be changed if you only want to bind to one network interface.

  RABBITMQ_NODE_PORT

  Defaults to 5672.

  RABBITMQ_CLUSTER_CONFIG_FILE

  Defaults to /etc/default/rabbitmq_cluster.config. If this file is present it is used by the server to auto-configure a RabbitMQ cluster. See the clustering guide for details.

Running the Server

Invoke the rabbitmq-server shell script. 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. To shut down the server just terminate the process. Alternatively, use the rabbitmqctl stop command.

You can also start the server in "detached" mode with rabbitmq-server -detached, in which case the server process is backgrounded immediately and nothing is written to the console.

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.

In order to retain a complete log history the startup scripts, by default, append the contents to the corresponding .1 files prior to starting the broker. You can easily set up log rotation process by creating logrotate script as it is done for Debian and RPM based distributions.