Installation
Add the OpenTelemetry package repository and install the system packages on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or RHEL and derivatives.
OpenTelemetry on Linux hosts
Install OpenTelemetry as a system package to automatically instrument the applications running on a Linux host.
You are viewing the English version of this page because it has not yet been fully translated. Interested in helping out? See Contributing.
Setting up OpenTelemetry usually depends on where your applications run. Some environments are highly automated, such as Kubernetes, thanks to the OpenTelemetry Operator, or Functions as a Service with the OpenTelemetry Lambda layers. But many Java, .NET, Node.js, and Python applications run directly on Linux hosts, where instrumenting them has traditionally meant downloading agents by hand and wiring up environment variables yourself.
The OpenTelemetry Packaging SIG provides system packages that make OpenTelemetry a dependency of the host itself. After installing a single package and restarting your applications, the Java, .NET, Node.js, and Python processes on the host are automatically instrumented and start emitting telemetry.
How it works
The opentelemetry package is a metapackage that depends on:
- The OpenTelemetry Injector, which configures the dynamic linker so that supported runtimes load the matching auto-instrumentation when a process starts.
- The language-specific auto-instrumentation packages for Java, .NET, Node.js, and Python.
Once installed, the injector attaches to every newly started, dynamically linked
process on the host. It only has a visible effect on processes of a supported
runtime, loading the matching auto-instrumentation for them; processes of
runtimes without an OpenTelemetry SDK are left unaffected. Applications that
were already running are instrumented after they are restarted. By default,
telemetry is exported using OTLP to localhost on ports 4317 (gRPC) and
4318 (HTTP), so you typically run a local
OpenTelemetry Collector to receive and forward it. The
Collector itself is distributed as system packages by the
OpenTelemetry Collector Releases
project; integrating it into this system-package repository is tracked in
opentelemetry-collector-releases#1561.
The Packaging and OBI SIGs also plan to deliver OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation as a system package, extending zero-code instrumentation to additional runtimes such as Go, Rust, and C++.
Get started
- Installation: add the repository and install the package on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or RHEL and derivatives.
- Configuration: point the injector at your Collector or backend and tune what gets instrumented.
Status and limitations
Warning
The system packages are early in their journey and are not yet meant for production workloads. Expect changes as the packaging story matures.
Specifically:
- The APT and YUM repositories are currently hosted on GitHub Pages, which is not their final home.
- Packages are not yet signed, so the installation instructions disable signature verification.
- The OpenTelemetry Collector is not yet part of the base metapackage; you install and run it separately for now.
The Packaging SIG is actively looking for end-user feedback. Please try the packages and open issues in the opentelemetry-packaging repository.
Learn more
- Blog post: One-command OpenTelemetry setup on Linux hosts
- The opentelemetry-packaging repository and its weekly SIG meeting.
Configuration
Point the OpenTelemetry Injector at your Collector or backend and control what gets instrumented on a Linux host.
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