How to get RabbitMQ management command line tool to work on Windows

Question

I've followed the instructions RabbitMQ management command line tool but when running with

python.exe rabbitmqadmin.exe 

Gives me an error:

ERROR: Action not specified

and:

rabbitmqadmin --help 

displays:

Is this really the case or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

Don't rename rabbitmqadmin to rabbitmqadmin.exe - it's really not an executable file. That is the cause of the (remarkably misleading) "cannot start due to incompatibility" message you're seeing.

ERROR: Action not specified

is due to... not specifying an action.

But the bit you might be missing is that on Windows you always need to prefix invocations with python.exe e.g.:

python.exe rabbitmqadmin --help
python.exe rabbitmqadmin declare exchange name=my-exchange type=topic

Answer 2

The error means exactly what it says, you didn't invoke rabbitmqadmin correctly by specifying a command.

Walkthough on how to use rabbitmqadmin:

For me the executable is called: rabbitmqadmin downloaded from here: https://www.rabbitmq.com/management-cli.html

Executing it from commandline without any options, and you get an error:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin
ERROR: Action not specified
rabbitmqadmin --help for help

Getting help on generic options:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin --help
<prints a mountain of help>

Get a list of subcommands you can run:

python rabbitmqadmin help subcommands

Get a list of users:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin list users
+-------+------------------------------+---------------+
| name  |        password_hash         |     tags      |
+-------+------------------------------+---------------+
| guest | oiz5zGozWya1qBblv6gbFrGYCnA= | administrator |
+-------+------------------------------+---------------+

List vhosts:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin list vhosts
+------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+----------+----------+---------+
| name | messages | messages_ready | messages_unacknowledged | recv_oct | send_oct | tracing |
+------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+----------+----------+---------+
| /    | 0        | 0              | 0                       | 1218     | 1028     | False   |
| foo  |          |                |                         |          |          | False   |
+------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+----------+----------+---------+

List Exchanges:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin list exchanges
+-------+--------------------+---------+-------------+---------+----------+
| vhost |        name        |  type   | auto_delete | durable | internal |
+-------+--------------------+---------+-------------+---------+----------+
| /     |                    | direct  | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.direct         | direct  | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.fanout         | fanout  | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.headers        | headers | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.match          | headers | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.rabbitmq.log   | topic   | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.rabbitmq.trace | topic   | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | amq.topic          | topic   | False       | True    | False    |
| /     | logs               | fanout  | False       | False   | False    |
| /     | my-exchange        | topic   | False       | True    | False    |
+-------+--------------------+---------+-------------+---------+----------+

Login as default user and get nodes:

python rabbitmqadmin --username=guest --password=guest list nodes

<prints mountain of information about nodes>

Login as guest and List Queues:

eric@dev ~$ python rabbitmqadmin --username=guest --password=guest list queues
+-------+--------------------------------+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------------+---------------------+--------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+---------------------+--------+---------+
| vhost |              name              | auto_delete | consumers | durable | exclusive_consumer_tag |     idle_since      | memory | messages | messages_ready | messages_unacknowledged |        node         | policy | status  |
+-------+--------------------------------+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------------+---------------------+--------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+---------------------+--------+---------+
| /     | amq.gen-hWC6xdjX3g5GABc2nED-YQ | True        | 1         | False   |                        | 2014-09-08 13:24:34 | 14048  | 0        | 0              | 0                       | rabbit@ip-15-1-5-54 |        | running |
+-------+--------------------------------+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------------+---------------------+--------+----------+----------------+-------------------------+---------------------+--------+---------+