Step‑by‑Step Guide to Install and Run RabbitMQ on Linux

Overview

RabbitMQ is an open‑source message‑queue server that lets you enqueue messages from one application and retrieve them from the same or another application, supporting many programming languages.

Install Erlang

RabbitMQ requires Erlang to run. The stable Erlang version at the time of writing is R16B.

cd /usr/save
wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R16B.tar.gz
tar xvfz /usr/save/otp_src_R16B.tar.gz

Build and install from source:

cd otp_src_R16B
LANG=C; export LANG
./configure
make
make install

Verify Erlang Installation

Run erl from the command line; you should see the Erlang shell indicating version R16B.

# erl
Erlang R16B (erts-5.10.1) ...

Download RabbitMQ

The current stable RabbitMQ server version is 3.0.4. For this guide we use the Generic Unix package.

cd /usr/save
wget http://www.rabbitmq.com/releases/rabbitmq-server/v3.0.4/rabbitmq-server-generic-unix-3.0.4.tar.gz
tar xvfz rabbitmq-server-generic-unix-3.0.4.tar.gz
cd rabbitmq_server-3.0.4

Start RabbitMQ Server

Launch the server in detached mode:

# cd /usr/save/rabbitmq_server-3.0.4
# sbin/rabbitmq-server -detached
Warning: PID file not written; -detached was passed.

Verify RabbitMQ Status

Use rabbitmqctl to check the server status or stop it when needed.

# sbin/rabbitmqctl status
... (output showing node, running applications, memory, etc.)

To stop the server:

# sbin/rabbitmqctl stop

Troubleshooting

If you encounter the error could_not_start_tcp_listener on CentOS 6, it is often caused by a port conflict with the Matahari package, which also listens on port 5672. Stop the qpidd daemon or uninstall the conflicting packages.

# chkconfig --list | grep -i qpid
# service qpidd stop
# chkconfig qpidd off

After disabling the conflicting service, restart RabbitMQ; it should start without errors.