[rabbitmq-discuss] Port Number

Thu Aug 27 08:53:29 BST 2009

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 09:37:12PM -0700, Dan Simpson wrote:
> I am having trouble getting rabbitmq to listen on a "well-known" port.  I am
> guessing there is some implemented restriction for listening on any port
> less than 1024.

You will need to start Rabbit as the root user in order to gain access to
ports under 1024. This is a security risk, and Rabbit is not designed to
be used in this way - in particular, we don't do the "usual" trick of
opening the port as root and then becomming some other user, dropping
our priviledges but keeping the port open. If you start Rabbit as root,
it will stay as root, which is potentially dangerous.

That said, if you wish to proceed, it's probably not straight forward to
stop Rabbit being started as the rabbit user. Therefore, I'd directly
edit /etc/passwd and make sure rabbit has a uid of 0. Then, even when it
starts up as rabbit, it's still root!

Matthew