rabbitmq-server doesn't start (status=64)

Question

Running sudo service rabbitmq-server start results in the following output:

Job for rabbitmq-server.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status rabbitmq-server.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

systemctl status output for rabbitmq-server.service is as follows:

● rabbitmq-server.service - RabbitMQ broker
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rabbitmq-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2019-01-30 13:45:25 +08; 4s ago
Process: 32710 ExecStop=/usr/lib/rabbitmq/bin/rabbitmqctl shutdown (code=exited, status=69)
Process: 6836 ExecStart=/usr/lib/rabbitmq/bin/rabbitmq-server (code=exited, status=64)
Main PID: 6836 (code=exited, status=64)

Jan 30 13:45:25 ip-172-31-1-92 systemd[1]: rabbitmq-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=64/n/a

Jan 30 13:45:25 ip-172-31-1-92 systemd[1]: rabbitmq-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Jan 30 13:45:25 ip-172-31-1-92 systemd[1]: Failed to start RabbitMQ broker.

Answer 1

Turns out the problem was I had set the environment variable RABBITMQ_CONFIG_FILE to /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.config but created that file as rabbitmq.conf. The server crashed as a result trying to look for a file that didn't exist.