rabbitmq-server fails to start when /var/log/rabbitmq does not exist

[Michael Baudino]

rabbitmq-server fails to start (`sudo service [re]start rabbitmq-server`) if the log directory (`/var/log/rabbitmq` by default) does not exist.

It's a frequent use-case for people who mount `/var/log` as `tmpfs` (e.g. for SSD optimization).

The script just hangs forever and does not provide any useful output nor (you guessed it) any log.

Running `sudo mkdir /var/log/rabbitmq && sudo chown rabbitmq:rabbitmq /var/log && sudo service rabbitmq-server restart` starts it successfully, though.

Bug noticed on rabbitmq-server 3.6.2-1 but it may affect other versions too.

Feel free to ask more information, I reproduce this bug every single morning when starting my computer ;-)

[Breno Leitão (breno-leitao)]

I was able to reproduce this issue also:

Oct 17 14:01:11 u1610 rabbitmq[23206]: /usr/sbin/rabbitmq-server: 33: /usr/sbin/rabbitmq-server: cannot create /var/log/rabbitmq/startup_log: Dir
Oct 17 14:01:11 u1610 systemd[1]: rabbitmq-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Oct 17 14:01:12 u1610 rabbitmq[23207]: Waiting for rabbit@u1610 ...
Oct 17 14:01:12 u1610 rabbitmq[23207]: pid is 21986 ...
Oct 17 14:01:12 u1610 rabbitmq[23207]: Error: process_not_running
Oct 17 14:01:12 u1610 systemd[1]: rabbitmq-server.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=2
Oct 17 14:01:12 u1610 systemd[1]: Failed to start RabbitMQ Messaging Server.
-- Subject: Unit rabbitmq-server.service has failed

[Joshua Powers (powersj)]

Confirmed it still occurs in Zesty with 3.6.6-1

[Joshua Powers (powersj)]

Because this occurs on the latest development branch of Ubuntu and because we do not have a delta with Debian I went and confirmed whether this was occurring upstream or not. I did confirm that it was occurring on the latest upstream release from 5 days ago (3.6.7) and filed an upstream issue. That issue is attached to this bug now and I will wait to see what they have to say.

Here is a direct URL:
https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/issues/1151

[Joshua Powers (powersj)]

Well that was fast as I had a quick back and forth on that bug I linked above. Feel free to add any more details if you want.

The heart of the issue comes down to the fact that the rabbitmq-server runs as a non-root user who will not have permissions to create a directory in /var/log. The result is not being able to create the log directory and failure to start. To be fair, rabbitmq-server does try to create the directory as noted in the Github issue above.

One solution to avoid this, the rabbitmq-server packaging would need to be changed to run the service as a root user or log to somewhere it would have permissions to going forward. I do not believe we would want to change this, so I am going to mark this bug as "wont fix". If you have any further details, questions, or notes feel free to add them here or to the Github bug above.