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Software, Tutorials and guides

RabbitMQ: How to move configuration, data and log directories on Windows

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A good part of my job has to do with enterprise messaging. When a piece of data -a message- needs to be sent from, say, an invoicing system to an accounting system and then to a customer relationship system and then to the customer portal… it has to navigate treacherous waters.

Avast ye bilge-sucking scurvy dogs! A JSON message from accounting says they hornswaggled 1000 doubloons! Aarrr!!!

So we need to make sure that whatever happens, say if a system is overloaded while receiving the message, the message will not be lost.

A key component in this is message queues (MQ), like RabbitMQ. An MQ plays the middleman; it receives a message from a system and stores it reliably until the next system has confirmed that it picked it up.

My daily duties includes setting up, configuring and maintaining a few RabbitMQ instances. It works great! Honestly, so far -for loads up to a couple of 100s of messages per second- I haven’t even had the need to do any serious tuning.

But one thing that annoys me on Windows is that, after installation, the location of everything except the binaries -configuration, data, logs- is under the profile dir of the user (C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\RabbitMQ) that did the installation, even if the service runs as LocalSystem. Not very good, is it?

Therefore I’ve created this script to help me. The easiest way to use it is run it before you install RabbitMQ. Change the directories in this part and run it from an admin powershell:

# ========== Customize here ==========
$BaseLocation = "C:\mqroot\conf"
$DbLocation = "C:\mqroot\db"
$LogLocation = "C:\mqroot\log"
# ====================================

Then just reboot and run the installation normally; when it starts, RabbitMQ will use the directories you specified.

You can also do it after installation, if you have a running instance and want to move it. In this case do the following (you can find these steps also in the script):

  1. Stop the RabbitMQ service.
  2. From Task Manager, kill the epmd.exe process if present.
  3. Go to the existing base dir (usually C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\RabbitMQ)
    and move it somewhere else (say, C:\temp).
  4. Run this script (don’t forget to change the paths).
  5. Reboot the machine
  6. Run the “RabbitMQ Service (re)install” (from Start Menu).
  7. Copy the contents of the old log dir to $LogLocation.
  8. Copy the contents of the old db dir to $DbLocation.
  9. Copy the files on the root of the old base dir (e.g. advanced.config, enabled_plugins) to $BaseLocation.
  10. Start the RabbitMQ service.

Here’s the script. Have fun 🙂

#
# Source: DotJim blog (http://dandraka.com)
# Jim Andrakakis, March 2021
#

# What this script does is:
#   1. Creates the directories where the configuration, queue data and logs will be stored.
#   2. Downloads a sample configuration file (it's necessary to have one).
#   3. Sets the necessary environment variables.

# If you're doing this before installation: 
# Just run it, reboot and then install RabbitMQ.

# If you're doing this after installation, i.e. if you have a 
# running service and want to move its files:
#   1. Stop the RabbitMQ service
#   2. From Task Manager, kill the epmd.exe process if present
#   3. Go to the existing base dir (usually C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\RabbitMQ)
#      and move it somewhere else (say, C:\temp).
#   4. Run this script.
#   5. Reboot the machine
#   6. Run the "RabbitMQ Service (re)install" (from Start Menu)
#   7. Copy the contents of the old log dir to $LogLocation.
#   8. Copy the contents of the old db dir to $DbLocation.
#   9. Copy the files on the root of the old base dir (e.g. advanced.config, enabled_plugins) 
#      to $BaseLocation.
#   10. Start the RabbitMQ service.

# ========== Customize here ==========

$BaseLocation = "C:\mqroot\conf"
$DbLocation = "C:\mqroot\db"
$LogLocation = "C:\mqroot\log"

# ====================================

$exampleConfUrl = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/master/deps/rabbit/docs/rabbitmq.conf.example"

Clear-Host
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

$dirList = @($BaseLocation, $DbLocation, $LogLocation)
foreach($dir in $dirList) {
    if (-not (Test-Path -Path $dir)) {
        New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $dir
    }
}

# If this fails (e.g. because there's a firewall) you have to download the file 
# from $exampleConfUrl manually and copy it to $BaseLocation\rabbitmq.conf
try {
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $exampleConfUrl -OutFile ([System.IO.Path]::Combine($BaseLocation, "rabbitmq.conf"))
}
catch {
    Write-Host "(!) Download of conf file failed. Please download the file manually and copy it to $BaseLocation\rabbitmq.conf"
    Write-Host "(!) Url: $exampleConfUrl"
}

&setx /M RABBITMQ_BASE $BaseLocation
&setx /M RABBITMQ_CONFIG_FILE "$BaseLocation\rabbitmq"
&setx /M RABBITMQ_MNESIA_BASE $DbLocation
&setx /M RABBITMQ_LOG_BASE $LogLocation

Write-Host "Finished. Now you can install RabbitMQ."