Errno 111 Connection refused when using Celery with SQS

Question

I am having a problem when I run the `celery status` or `celery purge` commands. ``` File "/usr/bin/celery", line 11, in <module> sys.exit(main()) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/__main__.py", line 30, in main main() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 81, in main cmd.execute_from_commandline(argv) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 769, in execute_from_commandline super(CeleryCommand, self).execute_from_commandline(argv))) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 306, in execute_from_commandline return self.handle_argv(self.prog_name, argv[1:]) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 761, in handle_argv return self.execute(command, argv) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 693, in execute ).run_from_argv(self.prog_name, argv[1:], command=argv[0]) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 310, in run_from_…

Accepted Answer

Based on documentation of the commands status and purge you need to provide celery with the celery app you're referring to so that it knows what broker to use. By just typing `$celery purge` or by typing `$celery status` celery doesn't know what celery app you're targeting and so fails.

Therefore, go to your celery app

`$cd /path/to/your/celery/app/directory`

and then call celery purge on your app. In this example my directory has `celeryapp.py` and the contents are:

```
from config import config
from celery import Celery
celery_app = Celery('tasks', 
                    backend=config.celery_backend_uri, 
                    broker=config.celery_broker_uri)
celery_app.conf.update(
    CELERY_IMPORTS=(
        'app.module_a.tasks',   # we're not including our tasks here as
        'app.module_b.tasks',   # our tasks are in other files listed here
    )
)
```

the contents are not as important as our call, but they are provided to show that we have our celery app inside `celeryapp.py` so I can call

```
$celery -A celeryapp status
worker-name-a@node-name: OK
worker-name-b@node-name: OK
```

or

```
$celery -A celeryapp purge
WARNING: This will remove all tasks from queue: celery.
         There is no undo for this operation! 
(to skip this prompt use the -f option)
Are you sure you want to delete all tasks (yes/NO)? yes
No messages purged from 1 queue
```

I had a similar question here and Sol seemed to confirm that celery will output this error if no app is provided by stating

How would it know what broker transport to use if you don't give it the location of the app?

Errno 111 Connection refused when using Celery with SQS

Solution

Problem