Defeat rabbitmq-server dpkg autostart

I need rabbitmq-server installed on Ubuntu. Rabbitmq-server tries to start itself on install, and on many dpkg and apt-get commands thereafter. (Having it run on install is intentional, according to the [instructions](https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-debian.html#running-debian).) On this box, rabbitmq server can't start, and it takes about a minute to give up. I don't want to fix that. I want to make it not try to start whenever I run, say apt-get install something-not-related-to-rabbitmq When I do that, not only does it take an extraordinarily long time to install the package, but it also exits with 100, even if the package itself installed fine. Here's a snippet of what happens: $ sudo apt-get install fortune Reading package lists... Done -- SNIP -- Unpacking fortunes-min (1:1.99.1-7) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) ... Setting up rabbitmq-server (3.6.0-1) ... * Starting message broker rabbitmq-server * FAILED - check /var/log/rabbitmq/startup_\{log, _err\} [fail] invoke-rc.d: initscript rabbitmq-server, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing package rabbitmq-server (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Setting up librecode0:amd64 (3.6-21) ... Setting up fortune-mod (1:1.99.1-7) ... Setting up fortunes-min (1:1.99.1-7) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-0ubuntu6.6) ... Errors were encountered while processing: rabbitmq-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) $ echo $? 100 I'd rather not uninstall it, as I do eventually plan to get around to using it. But frankly, I think it's a little bit nuts that it hijacks my dpkg, and I would appreciate some help killing that little misfeature with fire.