How to Enable Plugins in RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is an open source most popular message broker software that implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP). It is written in the Erlang programming language. RabbitMQ can be easily deployed in a distributed and federated configurations to meet high-scale, high-availability requirements.

In this article I will show how you can install plugins in RabbitMQ.

RabbitMQ supports lots of plugins. This page documents the plugins that ship with RabbitMQ 3.7.5.

Enable Plugins

To enable plugins use the below command:

# rabbitmq-plugins enable plugin-name

For example:

# rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
The following plugins have been enabled:
  mochiweb
  webmachine
  rabbitmq_web_dispatch
  amqp_client
  rabbitmq_management
Plugin configuration has changed. Restart RabbitMQ for changes to take effect.

Disable Plugins

To disable plugins use the below command:

# rabbitmq-plugins disable plugin-name

For example:

# rabbitmq-plugins disable rabbitmq_management_agent
The following plugins have been disabled:
  mochiweb
  webmachine
  rabbitmq_web_dispatch
  amqp_client
  rabbitmq_management_agent
  rabbitmq_management
Plugin configuration has changed. Restart RabbitMQ for changes to take effect.

List of Installed Plugins

You can see a list of which plugins are enabled with:

# rabbitmq-plugins list

For example:

# rabbitmq-plugins list
[e] amqp_client                       3.2.2
[ ] cowboy                            0.5.0-rmq3.2.2-git4b93c2d
[ ] eldap                             3.2.2-gite309de4
[e] mochiweb                          2.7.0-rmq3.2.2-git680dba8
[ ] rabbitmq_amqp1_0                  3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_auth_backend_ldap        3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_auth_mechanism_ssl       3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_consistent_hash_exchange 3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_federation               3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_federation_management    3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_jsonrpc                  3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_jsonrpc_channel          3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_jsonrpc_channel_examples 3.2.2
[E] rabbitmq_management               3.2.2
[e] rabbitmq_management_agent         3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_management_visualiser    3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_mqtt                     3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_shovel                   3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_shovel_management        3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_stomp                    3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_tracing                  3.2.2
[e] rabbitmq_web_dispatch             3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_web_stomp                3.2.2
[ ] rabbitmq_web_stomp_examples       3.2.2
[ ] rfc4627_jsonrpc                   3.2.2-git5e67120
[ ] sockjs                            0.3.4-rmq3.2.2-git3132eb9
[e] webmachine                        1.10.3-rmq3.2.2-gite9359c7

The rabbitmq-plugins comand will enable or disable plugins by updating the plugin configuration file. It will then contact the running server to tell it to start or stop plugins as needed. You can use the –n option to specify a different node, or use –offline to only change the file.