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

Install the Collector for Linux manually 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector for Linux is a package that provides integrated collection and forwarding for all data types. To install the package manually, read this doc.

Note

You can also install the package using the installer script or deployment and configuration management tools.

Splunk offers the following manual configuration options:

Permissions 🔗

You need at least these capabilities to allow the Collector to run without root permissions, regardless of the user:

  • cap_dac_read_search: Allows to bypass file read permission checks, and directory read and execute permission checks.

  • cap_sys_ptrace: Allows to trace, manage, and transfer data for arbitrary processes.

Learn more about these recommended capabilities in Linux capabilities - manual page .

Note

Your systems might require higher or more custom permissions.

If you already have setcap/libcap2 installed, the installer script will set these permissions for you. If you don’t, use the following setcap command to install the permissions:

setcap CAP_SYS_PTRACE,CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH=+eip /usr/bin/otelcol

To set custom permissions after the Collector has been installed, use:

setcap {CUSTOM_CAPABILITIES}=+eip /usr/bin/otelcol

Environmental variables 🔗

If you use Docker, Binary file, or Tar file, you can use environmental variables to configure the Collector. The following environmental variables are required:

  • SPLUNK_REALM (no default): Which realm to send the data to. For example: us0.

  • SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN (no default): Access token to authenticate requests.

Install the Collector for Linux with package repositories 🔗

Splunk Observability Cloud supports all Intel, AMD, and ARM systemd-based operating systems, including CentOS, Debian, Oracle, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. Manually installing an integration is useful for containerized environments, or if you want to use other common deployment options.

Each installation method comes with a default configuration with its own set of environment variables, and their values depend on the installation method, as well as your specific needs.

Caution

You need systemctl to run the Collector as a service, since it’s the main tool used to examine and control the state of the systemd system and service manager. Otherwise, you need to run the Collector.

Install the Collector for Linux with Debian 🔗

To install the Collector for Linux using a Debian package, set up the package repository and install the Collector package:

curl -sSL https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk/otel-collector-deb/splunk-B3CD4420.gpg > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/splunk.gpg
echo 'deb https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk/otel-collector-deb release main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/splunk-otel-collector.list
apt-get update
apt-get install -y splunk-otel-collector

# Optional: install Splunk OpenTelemetry automatic discovery for language runtimes
apt-get install -y splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation

See also:

Install the Collector for Linux with RPM 🔗

To install the Collector for Linux using a RPM package, set up the package repository and install the Collector package:

yum install -y libcap  # Required for enabling cap_dac_read_search and cap_sys_ptrace capabilities on the Collector

cat <<EOH > /etc/yum.repos.d/splunk-otel-collector.repo
[splunk-otel-collector]
name=Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector Repository
baseurl=https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk/otel-collector-rpm/release/$basearch
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk/otel-collector-rpm/splunk-B3CD4420.pub
enabled=1
EOH

yum install -y splunk-otel-collector

# Optional: install Splunk OpenTelemetry zero-code instrumentation
yum install -y splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation

See also:

Install the Collector for Linux with downloaded packages 🔗

If you prefer to install the Collector without the installer script or the Debian/RPM repositories, download the individual Debian or RPM package from the GitHub releases page and install it as shown below.

Note that:

  • You need to have root privileges.

  • Find the releases in GitHub at Splunk OTel Collector releases .

  • To install the setcap dependency and the Collector package, replace <path to splunk-otel-collector deb/rpm> with the local path to the downloaded Collector package.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y libcap2-bin  # Required for enabling cap_dac_read_search and cap_sys_ptrace capabilities on the Collector
dpkg -i <path to splunk-otel-collector deb>

See also:

Post-install configuration for Debian/RPM 🔗

The following applies:

  • The default configuration file is installed in /etc/otel/collector/agent_config.yaml, if it doesn’t already exist.

  • The /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf environment file is required to start the splunk-otel-collector systemd service.

    • The service automatically starts if this file exists during install or upgrade.

    • A sample environment file is installed to /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf.example, and it includes the required environment variables for the default config. To use this sample file, set the variables as you require, and save the file as /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf.

  • You must restart the service for any changes to the config file or environment file to take effect. To start or restart the service, run:

    sudo systemctl restart splunk-otel-collector

  • To check the splunk-otel-collector service status, run:

    sudo systemctl status splunk-otel-collector

  • To view the splunk-otel-collector service logs and errors in the systemd journal run:

    sudo journalctl -u splunk-otel-collector

Zero-code instrumentation with Debian and RPM packages 🔗

If you prefer to install the Collector without the installer script or the Debian/RPM repositories, download the individual Debian or RPM package from the GitHub releases page and install it as shown below.

Note that:

  • You need to have root privileges.

  • Download the appropriate splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation Debian or RPM package for the target system in GitHub at Splunk OTel Collector releases .

  • Replace <path to splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation deb/rpm> with the local path to the downloaded zero-code instrumentation package.

Run the following commands to install the zero-code instrumentation package:

dpkg -i <path to splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation deb>

To upgrade the zero-code instrumentation package, run:

sudo dpkg -i <path to splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation deb>

Zero-code instrumentation agents 🔗

The splunk-otel-auto-instrumentation deb/rpm package installs and supports configuration for the following zero-code instrumentation agents:

  • Java

  • Node.js

  • .Net

To learn more, see Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Linux.

Docker 🔗

The Linux docker image of the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector contains a multiarch manifest that specifies the images for AMD64, ARM64, and ppc64le architectures. Docker uses this manifest to download the correct image for the target platform.

Run the following command to install the package using Docker:

docker run --rm -e SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN=12345 -e SPLUNK_REALM=us0 \
    -p 13133:13133 -p 14250:14250 -p 14268:14268 -p 4317:4317 -p 6060:6060 \
    -p 7276:7276 -p 8888:8888 -p 9080:9080 -p 9411:9411 -p 9943:9943 \
    --name otelcol quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector:latest
    # Use a semantic versioning (semver) tag instead of the ``latest`` tag.
    # Semantic versioning is a formal convention for determining the version
    # number of new software releases.

The following list provides more information on the docker run command options:

  • --rm automatically removes the container when it exits.

  • -e sets simple (non-array) environment variables in the container you’re running, or overwrite variables that are defined in the Dockerfile of the image you’re running.

  • -p publishes a container’s port(s) to the host.

Run the following command to run an interactive bash shell on the container and see the status of the Collector:

docker exec -it containerID bash

Note

If you are running the Collector in --read-only mode and using any Smart Agent receiver’s legacy collectd monitor types, you need to provide a writable config directory similar to --read-only --tmpfs /usr/lib/splunk-otel-collector/agent-bundle/run:uid=999,gid=999 (default) or as configured by the Smart Agent extension’s collectd::configDir path.

Create a custom Docker configuration 🔗

You can provide a custom configuration file instead of the default configuration file. Use the environment variable SPLUNK_CONFIG or the --config command line argument to provide the path to this file.

You can also use the environment variable SPLUNK_CONFIG_YAML to specify your custom configuration file at the command line. This is useful in environments where access to the underlying file system is not readily available. For example, in AWS Fargate, you can store your custom configuration YAML in a parameter in the AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, then in your container definition specify SPLUNK_CONFIG_YAML to get the configuration from the parameter.

Command line arguments take precedence over environment variables. This applies to --config and --mem-ballast-size-mib. SPLUNK_CONFIG takes precedence over SPLUNK_CONFIG_YAML. For example:

docker run --rm -e SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN=12345 -e SPLUNK_REALM=us0 \
    -e SPLUNK_CONFIG=/etc/collector.yaml -p 13133:13133 -p 14250:14250 \
    -p 14268:14268 -p 4317:4317 -p 6060:6060 -p 8888:8888 \
    -p 9080:9080 -p 9411:9411 -p 9943:9943 \
    -v "${PWD}/collector.yaml":/etc/collector.yaml:ro \
    # A volume mount might be required to load the custom configuration file.
    --name otelcol quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector:latest
    # Use a semantic versioning (semver) tag instead of the ``latest`` tag.
    # Semantic versioning is a formal convention for determining the version
    # number of new software releases.

Use the following configuration to collect and log CPU metrics. The cat command assigns the CONFIG_YAML parameter to the YAML. The docker run command expands and assigns the parameter CONFIG_YAML to the environment variable SPLUNK_CONFIG_YAML. Note that YAML requires whitespace indentation to be maintained.

CONFIG_YAML=$(cat <<-END
receivers:
   hostmetrics:
      collection_interval: 1s
      scrapers:
         cpu:
exporters:
   debug:
      # Can be changed to info
      verbosity: detailed
service:
   pipelines:
      metrics:
         receivers: [hostmetrics]
         exporters: [logging]
END
)

docker run --rm \
    -e SPLUNK_CONFIG_YAML=${CONFIG_YAML} \
    --name otelcol quay.io/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector:latest
    # Use a semantic versioning (semver) tag instead of the ``latest`` tag.
    # Semantic versioning is a formal convention for determining the version
    # number of new software releases.

Binary file 🔗

To install the Collector using the binary file, follow these steps:

  1. Download the binary for your architecture from GitHub releases .

  2. If you’re not using an existing or custom config file, download the default config file for the Collector. See more at Collector for Linux default configuration.

  3. Run the binary from the command line:

# see available command-line options
$ <download dir>/otelcol_<platform>_<arch> --help
Usage of otelcol:
   --config string          Locations to the config file(s), note that only a single location can be set per flag entry e.g. --config=/path/to/first --config=path/to/second. (default "[]")
   --feature-gates string   Comma-delimited list of feature gate identifiers. Prefix with '-' to disable the feature. '+' or no prefix will enable the feature. (default "[]")
   --no-convert-config      Do not translate old configurations to the new format automatically. By default, old configurations are translated to the new format for backward compatibility.
   --set string             Set arbitrary component config property. The component has to be defined in the config file and the flag has a higher precedence. Array config properties are overridden and maps are joined. Example --set=processors.batch.timeout=2s (default "[]")
   -v, --version                Version of the collector.

# start the collector with the SPLUNK_REALM and SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN env vars required in our default config files
$ SPLUNK_REALM=<realm> SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN=<token> <download dir>/otelcol_<platform>_<arch> --config=<path to config file>

# alternatively, use the SPLUNK_CONFIG env var instead of the --config command-line option
$ SPLUNK_CONFIG=<path to config file> SPLUNK_REALM=<realm> SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN=<token> <download dir>/otelcol_<platform>_<arch>

# type Ctrl-c to stop the collector

Tar file 🔗

The tar.gz archive of the distribution is also available. It contains the default agent and gateway configuration files, which include the environment variables.

To use the tar file:

  1. Unarchive it to a directory of your choice on the target system.

tar xzf splunk-otel-collector_<version>_<arch>.tar.gz

  1. On amd64 systems, go into the unarchived agent-bundle directory and run bin/patch-interpreter $(pwd). This ensures that the binaries in the bundle have the right loader set on them, since your host’s loader might not be compatible.

Working on non-default locations 🔗

If you’re running the Collector from a non-default location, the Smart Agent receiver and agent configuration file require that you set two environment variables currently used in the Smart Agent extension:

  • SPLUNK_BUNDLE_DIR: The path to the Smart Agent bundle. For example, /usr/lib/splunk-otel-collector/agent-bundle.

  • SPLUNK_COLLECTD_DIR: The path to the collectd config directory for the Smart Agent. For example, /usr/lib/splunk-otel-collector/agent-bundle/run/collectd.

Next steps 🔗

After you have installed the package, see:

This page was last updated on Apr 10, 2025.