[rabbitmq-discuss] RABBITMQ_NODENAME

[Ovidiu Deac]

Thanks for the explanation. I knew a few things about erlang but I was
more interested when the rabbitmq node name is used. So basically the
node name is used only when you want to build a cluster or to
administer the machine remotely.  If no cluster stuff is involved and
the administration is done locally then you shouldn't care about the
node name. Right?

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 8:19 PM, Marek Majkowski <majek04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 17:37, Ovidiu Deac <ovidiudeac at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can somebody explain what is RABBITMQ_NODENAME and when is it used?
>
> RabbitMQ is build using Erlang. Erlang is a programming language, but actually
> it's way more than that.
>
> Erlang runs in a virtual machine (you can think about it as JVM (java
> virtual machine) but for erlang). Every virtual machine is named.
> RABBITMQ_NODENAME sets that name.
>
> This name allows you to:
>  - make sure that only one instance of Rabbit is running
>   (there can't be two erlang vm's with the same name)
>  - connect remotely to Rabbit instance
>   (you can open a new terminal, type a magic command and
>    get access to live rabbitmq instance. you could see statistics,
>    run any code, or maybe even do a live code upgrade!)
>  - connect remote tools, for example 'rabbitmqctl' connects
>    to a specified node, gets statistics and prints them on the screen.
>
> You can also say that erlang node name (RABBITMQ_NODENAME)
> is used to identify that particular Rabbitmq instance.
>
> Some pointer to erlang documentation:
> http://www.erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/distributed.html
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Cheers!
>  Marek Majkowski
>