Hi Jane,
Yes I have noticed how when stopping rabbitmq '/usr/lib64/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/epmd -daemon' it still running. If I kill that process and start rabbitmq back up that process starts running again. I don't understand why Rabbitmq init script would just leave that process running. I tried this and it did not help with what is going on.
Yes I created rabbitmq-env.conf so that I could force the mnesia location and hostname. I wanted the mnesia location to be located on a SAN drive that is mounted on my server and force the hostname to be localhost instead of the actual hostname.