[rabbitmq-discuss] FYI: RabbitMQ default installation broken on Ubuntu (potential all Debian-likes)

[René Gallati]

On 09/07/2012 05:50 PM, Emile Joubert wrote:
>
> Hi René,
>
> On 07/09/12 14:49, Rene Gallati wrote:
>> as a service provider I was tasked to install RabbitMQ for a customer
>> system. No problem, it's in Ubuntu's default repository, right?
>
> While not addressing your question I want to point out that version
> 2.7.1-0ubuntu4 shipping with 12.04 LTS makes it especially difficult to
> diagnose startup errors like the one you encountered and should
> therefore be avoided. You will find that the startup error log
> (/var/log/rabbitmq/startup_err by default) contains the frustratingly
> glib "rabbitmq failed to start" in case any error occurs. If at all
> possible use the latest version from the rabbitmq.com website instead.

Yeah I tripped on that too. That was when I removed it and installed the 
one from the official repository as detailed in 
http://www.rabbitmq.com/install-debian.html

That one then had better logging and told me "unable to resolve 
hostname" which brought me to the solution. Since the problem seems to 
exist in both versions and I found some forums/messages about "not 
resolving" at startup and how to fix it (via NODENAME entry) and came to 
the findings I am detailing here I thought I need to let you know.

Currently my workaround is simply to force a pre-existing configuration 
file down to the host in question with NODENAME set so the installation 
of the package does not trigger errors and consequently alerts. We're a 
service provider with thousands of managed services and hosts and we 
don't install programs by hand but via management software (in this 
case: puppet) so throwing an error at package installation is a big 
no-no for us.

Happy weekend

René