Docs » Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector » Get started with the Collector for Linux » Install the Collector for Linux with the installer script

Install the Collector for Linux with the installer script 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector for Linux is a package that provides integrated collection and forwarding for all data types.

Install the package using one of these methods:

Supported versions 🔗

The Collector supports the following Linux distributions and versions:

  • Amazon Linux: 2, 2023. Log collection with Fluentd is not currently supported for Amazon Linux 2023.

  • CentOS, Red Hat, or Oracle: 7, 8, 9

  • Debian: 9, 10, 11

  • SUSE: 12, 15 for version 0.34.0 or higher. Log collection with Fluentd is not currently supported.

  • Ubuntu: 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04

  • Rocky Linux: 8, 9

Included packages 🔗

The installer script deploys and configures these elements:

Install the Collector using the installer script 🔗

To install the Collector package using the installer script, follow these steps:

  1. Ensure you have systemd, curl and sudo installed.

  2. Download and run the installer script using this command:

curl -sSL https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.sh > /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh;
sudo sh /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh --realm $SPLUNK_REALM --memory $SPLUNK_MEMORY_TOTAL_MIB -- $SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN

Replacing the following variables for your environment:

Configure memory allocation 🔗

To configure memory allocation, change the --memory parameter. By default, this parameter is set to 512 MiB, or 500 x 2^20 bytes, of memory. Increase this setting to allocate more memory, as shown in the following example.

curl -sSL https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.sh > /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh;
sudo sh /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh --realm $SPLUNK_REALM --memory $SPLUNK_MEMORY_TOTAL_MIB \
    -- $SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN

Configure proxy settings 🔗

To configure proxy settings to install and run the OpenTelemetry Collector, see Configure proxy settings for the Collector.

Use configured repos 🔗

By default, apt/yum/zypper repo definition files are created to download the package and Fluentd deb/rpm packages from https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk and https://packages.treasuredata.com , respectively.

To skip these steps and use configured repos on the target system that provide the splunk-otel-collector and td-agent deb/rpm packages, specify the --skip-collector-repo or --skip-fluentd-repo options. For example:

curl -sSL https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.sh > /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh && \
sudo sh /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh --realm $SPLUNK_REALM --skip-collector-repo --skip-fluentd-repo \
 -- $SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN

Configure automatic discovery for back-end applications 🔗

You can also automatically instrument your Java, Node.js, and .NET applications along with the Collector installation. Automatic discovery removes the need to configure receivers for each back-end application. See Automatic discovery and configuration for back-end applications in Linux for the installation instructions.

For more information on instrumentation, see:

Collector for Linux with Docker 🔗

Install the Collector in a host with Docker 🔗

If you’re installing your Collector instance in a host with Docker, you need to configure a client to establish a connection with the daemon. Depending on your Docker installation and Collector deployment method, try one of these options:

  1. If your daemon is listening to a domain socket (for example /var/run/docker.sock), your Collector service or executable needs appropriate permissions and access. Add the splunk-otel-collector user to the Docker group as configured on your system:

$ usermod -aG docker splunk-otel-collector

  1. When using the quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector image, add the default container user to the required group as configured on your system, and the bind and mount the domain socket:

$ docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro --group-add $(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock) quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector:latest <...>

# or if specifying the user:group directly
$ docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro --user "splunk-otel-collector:$(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock)" quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector:latest <...>

Use auto discovery with containers 🔗

If your Collector instance is running in a Docker container and the discovery targets are also containers, you need to share the Docker socket when launching the Collector container:

$ docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro --group-add <socket_gid>

To use host bindings, run this command:

--set=splunk.discovery.extensions.docker_observer.config.use_host_bindings=true

Options of the installer script of the Collector for Linux 🔗

The Linux installer script supports the following options for the Collector, Automatic Discovery for back-end services and Fluentd.

To display all the configuration options supported by the script, use the -h flag.

curl -sSL https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.sh > /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh;
sh /tmp/splunk-otel-collector.sh -h

Collector 🔗

Option

Description

Default value

--api-url <url>

Set the API endpoint URL explicitly instead of using the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.

https://api.REALM.signalfx.com

--collector-config <path>

Set the path to an existing custom configuration file for the Collector service instead of using the default configuration file provided by the Collector package based on the --mode <agent|gateway> option. If the specified file requires custom environment variables, you can manually add both the variables and values to /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf after installation. Restart the Collector service with the sudo systemctl restart splunk-otel-collector command for the changes to take effect.

/etc/otel/collector/agent_config.yaml for agent mode; /etc/otel/collector/gateway_config.yaml for gateway mode

--collector-version <version>

The Collector package version to install.

latest

--discovery

Activate discovery mode on Collector startup. See Discover telemetry sources automatically for more information.

--hec-token <token>

Set the HEC token if it is different than the specified access_token.

--hec-url <url>

Set the HEC endpoint URL explicitly instead of using the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.

https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com/v1/log

--ingest-url <url>

Set the ingest endpoint URL explicitly instead of using the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.

https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com

--memory <memory size>

Total memory in MIB to allocate to the Collector. This option automatically calculates the ballast size. See Sizing and scaling for more information on how to scale and size the Collector.

512

--mode <agent|gateway>

Configure the Collector service to run in host monitoring (agent) or data forwarding (gateway) mode. See Collector deployment modes for more information.

agent

--listen-interface <ip>

Network interface the Collector receivers listen on.

127.0.0.1 for agent mode, otherwise 0.0.0.0

--realm <us0|us1|eu0|...>

The Splunk realm to use. The ingest, API, trace, and HEC endpoint URLs are automatically generated using this value.

us0

--service-group <group>

Set the group for the splunk-otel-collector service. The option creates the group if it doesn’t exist.

splunk-otel-collector

--service-user <user>

Set the user for the splunk-otel-collector service. The option creates the user if it doesn’t exist.

splunk-otel-collector

--skip-collector-repo

By default, a apt, yum, or zypper repo definition file is created to download the Collector package from https://splunk.jfrog.io. Use this option to skip the previous step and use a pre-configured repo on the target system that provides the splunk-otel-collector deb or rpm package.

--trace-url <url>

Set the trace endpoint URL explicitly instead of the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.

https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com/v2/trace

--

Use -- if the access token starts with -, for example -- -MY-ACCESS-TOKEN.

--uninstall

Removes the Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector for Linux.

Automatic Discovery for back-end services 🔗

Option

Description

Default value

--with[out]-instrumentation

Whether to install the splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation package and add the libsplunk.so shared object library to /etc/ld.so.preload to activate auto instrumentation for all supported processes on the host. Cannot be combined with the --with-systemd-instrumentation option. See Automatic discovery and configuration for back-end applications in Linux for more information.

--without-instrumentation

--with[out]-systemd-instrumentation

Whether to install the splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation package and configure a systemd drop-in file to activate auto instrumentation for all supported applications running as systemd services. Cannot be combined with the --with-instrumentation option. See Automatic discovery and configuration for back-end applications in Linux for more information.

--without-systemd-instrumentation

--with[out]-instrumentation-sdk <sdk>

Whether to enable auto instrumentation for a specific language. This option takes a comma separated set of values representing supported auto-instrumentation SDKs. Currently supported values: java, node, and dotnet. Use --with-instrumentation-sdk to enable only the specified language(s), for example --with-instrumentation-sdk java. Note: .NET (dotnet) auto instrumentation is only supported on x86_64/amd64.

--with-instrumentation-sdk java,nodejs,dotnet

--npm-path <path>

If Auto Instrumentation for Node.js is enabled, npm is required to install the included Splunk OpenTelemetry Auto Instrumentation for Node.js package. If npm is not found via the command -v npm shell command or if installation fails, Auto Instrumentation for Node.js will not be activated. Use this option to specify a custom path to npm, for example --npm-path /my/path/to/npm.

npm

--deployment-environment <value>

Set the deployment.environment resource attribute to the specified value. If not specified, the Environment in the Splunk APM UI will appear as unknown for all instrumented applications. The resource attribute will be appended to the OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variable.

--service-name <name>

Override the auto-generated service names for all instrumented applications with the specified value. The value will be set to the OTEL_SERVICE_NAME environment variable.

--otlp-endpoint <host:port>

Set the OTLP endpoint for captured traces, logs, and metrics for all activated SDKs. The value will be set to the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable. If not specified, the default behavior is to defer to the default OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT value for each activated SDK.

--otlp-endpoint-protocol <protocol>

Set the protocol for the OTLP endpoint, for example grpc or http/protobuf. The value will be set to the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL environment variable. If not specified, the default behavior is to defer to the default OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL value for each activated SDK.

--metrics-exporter <exporters>

Comma-separated list of exporters for collected metrics by all activated SDKs, for example otlp,prometheus. Set the value to none to disable collection and export of metrics. The value will be set to the OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER environment variable. The default behavior is to defer to the default OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER value for each activated SDK.

--logs-exporter <exporter>

Set the exporter for collected logs by all activated SDKs, for example otlp. Set the value to none to deactivate collection and export of logs. The OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER environment variable contains this value. By default, each activated SDK uses the default OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER value.

--[enable|disable]-profiler

Activate or deactivate AlwaysOn CPU Profiling for all activated SDKs that support the SPLUNK_PROFILER_ENABLED environment variable.

--disable-profiler

--[enable|disable]-profiler-memory

Activate or deactivate AlwaysOn Memory Profiling for all activated SDKs that support the SPLUNK_PROFILER_MEMORY_ENABLED environment variable.

--disable-profiler-memory

--[enable|disable]-metrics

Activate or deactivate collection and exporting metrics for all activated SDKs that support the SPLUNK_METRICS_ENABLED environment variable.

--disable-metrics

--instrumentation-version

The splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation package version to install. Note: The minimum supported version for Java and Node.js auto instrumentation is 0.87.0, and the minimum supported version for .NET auto instrumentation is 0.99.0.

latest

Fluentd 🔗

Option

Description

Default value

--with[out]-fluentd

Whether to install and configure fluentd to forward log events to the Collector. See Collect Linux logs with Fluentd for more information.

--without-fluentd

--skip-fluentd-repo

By default, a apt/yum repo definition file will be created to download the fluentd deb/rpm package from https://packages.treasuredata.com. Use this option to skip the previous step and use a pre-configured repo on the target system that provides the td-agent deb/rpm package.

Next steps 🔗

After you have installed the package, see:

This page was last updated on Sep 20, 2024.