[rabbitmq-discuss] RABBITMQ_NODENAME

Wed Jul 14 18:19:49 BST 2010

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