Installing RabbitMQ

The messaging server is a crucial element so that Roboconf can work.
The list of available messaging implementations are listed on this page.

In production environments, it is recommended to use RabbitMQ.
This page describes the steps to follow to install and configure RabbitMQ for Roboconf.

Notice that we replace the default « guest / guest » user by « roboconf / roboconf ».
That’s because the guest user is only usable on the local host (RabbitMQ’s security policy).

RabbitMQ as a Docker Container

The most simple solution is to get RabbitMQ as a Docker container.
Use…

# Expose internal ports on the system
# And replace the guest/guest user by roboconf/roboconf
docker run -d \
	--hostname my-rabbit \
	--name some-rabbit \
	-e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_USER=roboconf \
	-e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_PASS=roboconf \
	-p 15672:15672 \
	-p 5672:5672 \
	-p 4369:4369 \
	rabbitmq:3-management-alpine

… to launch RabbitMQ with the management plug-in (web console) and configured for Roboconf. The management console is available on http://localhost:15672. Please, refer to the official Docker image for more details.

RabbitMQ with SSL as a Docker Container

The Roboconf team has created a Docker image to launch RabbitMQ in a Docker container and pre-configured with a SSL configuration. The SSL configuration (certificates, etc) are generated on the fly by the container. By using a shared volume, it is then possible for clients (such as Roboconf) to reference the generated configuration.

Please, refer to the readme file in this Github repository for more details.

RabbitMQ as a Service

If you only want to test this messaging implementation, you might consider using https://www.cloudamqp.com instead of installing your own RabbitMQ server.

Full Installation

Installing RabbitMQ means installing an Erlang container and RabbitMQ itself. Follow the instructions on RabbitMQ’s web site.

It is recommended to install the version 3.3.3 or higher.
Versions 3.x come with a management plug-in which may be very useful. You should follow the instructions on RabbitMQ’s web site to install it.

The messaging server should be accessible through a public IP.
The most simple solution is generally to put it on a public server.

RabbitMQ needs to be configured with a user and a password. Otherwise, client connections will be refused. See this page about access control with RabbitMQ. You should clear the guest/guest credentials. The user name and password are the one you set in the Deployment Manager’s configuration.

Here is a short snippet to quickly configure RabbitMQ.
You must first connect to the machine hosting RabbitMQ and then execute these commands.

# To create a new user called roboconf
sudo rabbitmqctl add_user roboconf roboconf

# Grant read/write/access permissions to our new user
sudo rabbitmqctl set_permissions roboconf ".*" ".*" ".*"

# Check permissions
sudo rabbitmqctl list_user_permissions roboconf

# Delete the guest user
sudo rabbitmqctl delete_user guest

To adjust the access permissions, you may want to look at the man page of RabbitMQ.