Putting the following in /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf will make RabbitMQ and epmd listen on only localhost:
export RABBITMQ_NODENAME=rabbit@localhost
export RABBITMQ_NODE_IP_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
export ERL_EPMD_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
It takes a bit more work to configure Erlang to only use localhost for the higher numbered port (which is used for clustering nodes as far as I can tell). If you don't care about clustering and just want Rabbit to be run fully locally then you can pass Erlang a kernel option for it to only use the loopback interface.
To do so, create a new file in /etc/rabbitmq/ - I'll call it rabbit.config. In this file we'll put the Erlang option that we need to load on run time.
[{kernel,[{inet_dist_use_interface,{127,0,0,1}}]}].
If you're using the management plugin and also want to limit that to localhost, you'll need to configure its ports separately, making the rabbit.config include this:
[
{rabbitmq_management, [
{listener, [{port, 15672}, {ip, "127.0.0.1"}]}
]},
{kernel, [
{inet_dist_use_interface,{127,0,0,1}}
]}
].
(Note RabbitMQ leaves epmd running when it shuts down, so if you want to block off Erlang's clustering port, you will need to restart epmd separately from Rabbit.)
Next we need to have RabbitMQ load this at startup. Open up /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.conf again and put the following at the top:
export RABBITMQ_CONFIG_FILE="/etc/rabbitmq/rabbit"
This loads that config file when the rabbit server is started and will pass the options to Erlang.
You should now have all Erlang/RabbitMQ processes listening only on localhost! This can be checked with netstat -ntlap
EDIT : In older versions of RabbitMQ, the configuration file is : /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq.conf. However, this file has been replaced by the rabbit-env.conf file.
I got some very good help from the rabbitmq-discuss list:
The database RabbitMQ uses is bound to the machine's hostname, so if you copied the database dir to another machine, it won't work. If this is the case, you have to set up a machine with the same hostname as before and transfer any outstanding messages to the new machine. If there's nothing important in rabbit, you could just clear everything by removing the RabbitMQ files in /var/lib/rabbitmq.
I deleted everything in /var/lib/rabbitmq/mnesia/rabbit/ and it started up without trouble. Hooray!
Best Answer
I used to use rabbitmqctl a lot because I was stuck with a sysadmin who refused to install the RabbitMQ management plugins. But really, nowadays with version 2.8.4 of the server, just install the plugins. This gives you not only a web management GUI but a nice CLI that does allow you to talk to remote servers as well as local ones.
I haven't touched rabbitmqctl in months since the management plugins became available.