[rabbitmq-discuss] -setcookie flag

Fri Jul 19 10:24:39 BST 2013

On 19/07/13 01:02, Bipul Dutta wrote:

> Whatever I do, erlang creates a new .erlang.cookie file with a 
> different value in the user's home directory.

It works for me if I define the following variable in the startup
environment:

 RABBITMQ_SERVER_START_ARGS='-setcookie xyzzy'

If the Erlang VM is started up with "-setcookie" flag then it will not
write a random cookie to the home directory. You can confirm the current
cookie hash from the broker log. In my test case it contains

 cookie hash    : EnHtXvMFqtq8YFsWCeJMUg==

The hash is obtained from a base64 encoding of the MD5 hash of the cookie.

> Additionally what is the user home if RabbitMQ runs as a windows service
> as "Local System" user?

It should be %WINDIR%. You can get the home location with this command:

 rabbitmqctl eval 'init:get_argument(home).'

You must have access to the cookie of the running broker to be able to
execute rabbitmqctl commands though.

-Emile