[rabbitmq-discuss] Error running rabbitmqctl

[Russell Borogove]

In order to coordinate rabbitmq with alice, I'm setting the cookie for both on the command line with '-setcookie 123'. This seems to work fine. 

When I try to run rabbitmq, though, it errors out trying to read the cookie from my home dir:
russell at shard ~: sudo rabbitmqctl -setcookie 123 stop
{error_logger,{{2010,6,18},{12,32,20}},"Error when reading /Users/russell/.erlang.cookie: eacces",[]}

Why is it looking for the cookie there?