Connection failed - user: chef - (Bunny::ProtocolError)

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

# rabbitmqctl add_vhost /chef
# rabbitmqctl add_user chef
# rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p /chef chef ".*" ".*" ".*"

Later I reset the rabbitmq configuration using the following command

# rabbitmqctl force_reset

The issue was due to password which was given in server.rb of chef server was different than what I had given while running the rabbitmq server configuration.

Basically we should use same password which is set in “amqp_pass” in the Chef server - server.rb file and if you have not given the password in server.rb then the default password is testing.

# rabbitmqctl add_vhost /chef
# rabbitmqctl add_user chef testing
# rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p /chef chef ".*" ".*" ".*"

...at last I was able to start the chef server service and also able to connect to rabbitmq server.