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Adding a RabbitMQ Configuration File When Running as a Windows Service

A little context

I was having a hard time adding a rabbitmq.config file today. I added it in the right location, restarted the RabbitMQ Windows service and the logs still showed that the configuration file was not found.

If you're experiencing the same problem, you'll see a similar error message in the RabbitMQ log file after you restart the Windows service.

=INFO REPORT==== <date here>
node			: rabbit@<server>
home dir		: C:\Windows
config file(s)	: c:/path/to/config/rabbitmq.config (not found)
...some other stuff...

This will happen if you just install your RabbitMQ server with the normal, default installation process and then try to add a configuration file later. By default, RabbitMQ doesn't install configuration file and just uses all it's defined defaults.

Solution

I read the documentation a little more closely and finally came upon this line: "Windows service users will need to re-install the service after adding or removing a configuration file."

Oops. Guess I should have read the documentation more closely the first time around! The easiest way to do this is as follows (start a command prompt as administrator):

> cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-3.6.0\sbin"
> .\rabbitmq-service.bat remove
> .\rabbitmq-service.bat install
> .\rabbitmq-service.bat start

Of course, The path you cd into will depend on the version of RabbitMQ you have installed.

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