RabbitMQ install issue on Centos 5.5

Question

I've been trying to get rabbitmq-server-2.4.0 up and running on Centos 5.5 on an Amazon AWS instance.

My instance uses the following kernel: 2.6.18-xenU-ec2-v1.2

I've tried installation of erlang and rabbitmq-server using: 1) yum repos 2) direct rpm installation 3) compiling from source.

In every case, I get the following message when attempting to start the RabbitMQ-Server process:

pthread/ethr_event.c:98: Fatal error in wait__(): Function not implemented (38)

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Seems that this kernel is not compatible with Erlang 14B, 14B01, or 14B02

Compiling Erlang 13B04 led to a successful install of rabbitmq-server

Answer 2

For people in the future finding this answer, the RabbitMQ site itself has a potential answer for you:

Installing on RPM-based Linux (CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuse, RedHat)

Erlang on RHEL 5 (and CentOS 5)

Due to the EPEL package update policy, EPEL 5 contains Erlang version R12B-5, which is relatively old. rabbitmq-server supports R12B-5, but performance may be lower than for more recent Erlang versions, and certain non-core features are not supported (SSL support, HTTP-based plugins including the management plugin). Therefore, we recommend that you install the most recent stable version of Erlang. The easiest way to do this is to use a package repository provided for this purpose by the owner of the EPEL Erlang package. Enable it by invoking (as root):

wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/epel-erlang.repo http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/peter/erlang/epel-erlang.repo

and then install or update erlang with yum install erlang.

Answer 3

If you go down the route of building Erlang manually on a minimal OS install, you may also find that you need to install wxGTK & wxGTK-devel in order for all of the tests to build and run correctly.

Answer 4

I installed it by first installing erlang by source:

sudo yum -y install make gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel m4 ncurses-devel openssl-devel
wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R13B04.tar.gz
tar xfvz otp_src_R13B04.tar.gz
cd otp_src_R13B04/
./configure
sudo make install

After that create a symbolic link to also make erl available for root user:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/erl /bin/erl

Install rabbitmq rpm (Maybe outdated check latest release yourself):

wget http://www.rabbitmq.com/releases/rabbitmq-server/v2.4.1/rabbitmq-server-2.4.1-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh rabbitmq-server-2.4.1-1.noarch.rpm

Answer 5

If erlang is installed from source, rpm install of rabbitmq fails to recognize erlang stating that erlang R12B-3 is required.
Use:
rpm --nodeps -Uvh rabbitmq-server-2.6.1-1.noarch.rpm

I was able to install and use RabbitMQ 2.6.1 successfully on CentOS 5.6 with Erlang R14B04

Answer 6

The problem

When starting erlang, the message pthread/ethr_event.c:98: Fatal error in wait__(): Function not implemented (38) is, on modern distros, most likely the result of a precompiled Erlang binary interacting with a kernel that doesn't implement FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE and FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE. The kernels Amazon provides for EC2 do not implement these FUTEX_PRIVATE_ macros.

Attempting to build Erlang from source on an ec2 box may fail in the same way if the distro installs kernel headers into /usr/include/linux as a requirement of other packages. (E.g., Centos requires the kernel-headers package as a prerequisite for gcc, gcc-c++, glibc-devel and glibc-headers, among others). Since the headers installed by the package do not match the kernel installed by the EC2 image creation scripts, Erlang incorrectly assumes FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE and FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE are available.

The fix

To fix it, the fastest is to manually patch erts/include/internal/pthread/ethr_event.h to use the non-_PRIVATE futex implementation:

#if defined(FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE) && defined(FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE)
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAIT__ FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAKE__ FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE
#else
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAIT__ FUTEX_WAIT
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAKE__ FUTEX_WAKE
#endif

should become

//#if defined(FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE) && defined(FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE)
//#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAIT__ FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE
//#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAKE__ FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE  
//#else
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAIT__ FUTEX_WAIT
#  define ETHR_FUTEX_WAKE__ FUTEX_WAKE
//#endif

Quick test

If you suspect the private futex issue is your problem, but want to verify it before you recompile all of Erlang, the following program can pin it down:

#include <sys/syscall.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdint.h>
typedef uint32_t u32; /* required on older kernel headers to fix a bug in futex.h Delete this line if it causes problems. */
#include <linux/futex.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
#if defined(FUTEX_WAIT) && defined(FUTEX_WAKE) 
        uint32_t i = 1;
        int res = 0;
        res = syscall(__NR_futex, (void *) &i, FUTEX_WAKE, 1,
                        (void*)0,(void*)0, 0);
        if (res != 0)
        {
                printf("FUTEX_WAKE HAD ERR %i: %s\n", errno, strerror(errno));
        } else {
                printf("FUTEX_WAKE SUCCESS\n");
        }

        res = syscall(__NR_futex, (void *) &i, FUTEX_WAIT, 0,
                        (void*)0,(void*)0, 0);
        if (res != 0)
        {
                printf("FUTEX_WAIT HAD ERR %i: %s\n", errno, strerror(errno));
        } else {
                printf("FUTEX_WAIT SUCCESS\n");
        }
#else
        printf("FUTEX_WAKE and FUTEX_WAIT are not defined.\n");
#endif

#if defined(FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE) && defined(FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE) 
        uint32_t j = 1;
        int res_priv = 0;
        res_priv = syscall(__NR_futex, (void *) &j, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1,
                        (void*)0,(void*)0, 0);
        if (res_priv != 0)
        {
                printf("FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE HAD ERR %i: %s\n", errno, strerror(errno));
        } else {
                printf("FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE SUCCESS\n");
        }

        res_priv = syscall(__NR_futex, (void *) &j, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0,
                        (void*)0,(void*)0, 0);
        if (res_priv != 0)
        {
                printf("FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE HAD ERR %i: %s\n", errno, strerror(errno));
        } else {
                printf("FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE SUCCESS\n");
        }
#else
        printf("FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE and FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE are not defined.\n");
#endif


        return 0;
}

Paste it into futextest.c, then gcc futextest.c and ./a.out.

If your kernel implements private futexes, you'll see

FUTEX_WAKE SUCCESS
FUTEX_WAIT SUCCESS
FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE SUCCESS
FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE SUCCESS

If you have a kernel without the _PRIVATE futex functions, you'll see

FUTEX_WAKE SUCCESS
FUTEX WAIT SUCCESS
FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE HAD ERR 38: Function not implemented
FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE HAD ERR 38: Function not implemented

This fix should allow Erlang to compile, and will yield an environment you can install rabbitmq against using the --nodeps method discussed here.