I was trying to setup chef server on my local box using Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.4. After sucessfully installing all the required serivces chef-server was not running, so when I tried to start the service below error was displayed. Chef-server dead but pid file exists I tried to find the cause of this issue in logs but no clues in the logs as well. Then I run the chef server in foreground using the below command, to debug the issue #chef-server -C /etc/chef/server.rb -L /var/log/chef/server.log -p 4000 -e production -a thin -P /var/run/chef/server.pid -u chef -G chef Below stack trace was displayed merb : chef-server (api) : worker (port 4000) ~ Connection failed - user: chef - (Bunny::ProtocolError) This issue was becuase chef server was unable to connect to rabbitmq using bunny protocal as user chef. I had already run the below rabbitmq server configuration which is recommended in opscode site, but still it was failing to connect to rabbitmq # rab