Documentation Grafana Cloud Instrument and send data Grafana Alloy Reference Components otelcol otelcol.exporter.debug

Experimental

otelcol.exporter.debug

otelcol.exporter.debug accepts telemetry data from other otelcol components and writes them to the console (stderr). You can control the verbosity of the logs.

You can specify multiple otelcol.exporter.debug components by giving them different labels.

Usage

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otelcol.exporter.debug "LABEL" { }

Arguments

otelcol.exporter.debug supports the following arguments:

The verbosity argument must be one of:

• "basic": A single-line summary of received data is logged to stderr, with a total count of telemetry records for every batch of received logs, metrics, or traces.
• "normal": Produces the same output as "basic" verbosity.
• "detailed": All details of every telemetry record are logged to stderr, typically writing multiple lines for every telemetry record.

The following example shows "basic" and "normal" output:

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ts=2024-06-13T11:24:13.782957Z level=info msg=TracesExporter component_path=/ component_id=otelcol.exporter.debug.default "resource spans": 1, spans: 2

The following example shows "detailed" output:

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ts=2024-06-13T11:24:13.782957Z level=info msg=TracesExporter component_path=/ component_id=otelcol.exporter.debug.default "resource spans"=1 spans=2
ts=2024-06-13T11:24:13.783101Z level=info msg="ResourceSpans #0
Resource SchemaURL: https://opentelemetry.io/schemas/1.4.0
Resource attributes:
     -> service.name: Str(telemetrygen)
ScopeSpans #0
ScopeSpans SchemaURL:
InstrumentationScope telemetrygen
Span #0
    Trace ID       : 3bde5d3ee82303571bba6e1136781fe4
    Parent ID      : 5e9dcf9bac4acc1f
    ID             : 2cf3ef2899aba35c
    Name           : okey-dokey
    Kind           : Server
    Start time     : 2023-11-11 04:49:03.509369393 +0000 UTC
    End time       : 2023-11-11 04:49:03.50949377 +0000 UTC
    Status code    : Unset
    Status message :
Attributes:
     -> net.peer.ip: Str(1.2.3.4)
     -> peer.service: Str(telemetrygen-client)
Span #1
    Trace ID       : 3bde5d3ee82303571bba6e1136781fe4
    Parent ID      :
    ID             : 5e9dcf9bac4acc1f
    Name           : lets-go
    Kind           : Client
    Start time     : 2023-11-11 04:49:03.50935117 +0000 UTC
    End time       : 2023-11-11 04:49:03.50949377 +0000 UTC
    Status code    : Unset
    Status message :
Attributes:
     -> net.peer.ip: Str(1.2.3.4)
     -> peer.service: Str(telemetrygen-server)
        {"kind": "exporter", "data_type": "traces", "name": "debug"}"

Setting use_internal_logger to false is useful if you would like to see actual new lines instead of \n in the collector logs. However, by not using the internal logger you wouldn’t see metadata in the log line such as component_id=otelcol.exporter.debug.default. Multiline logs may also be harder to parse.

Blocks

The following blocks are supported inside the definition of otelcol.exporter.debug:

The > symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example, client > tls refers to a tls block defined inside a client block.

debug_metrics block

The debug_metrics block configures the metrics that this component generates to monitor its state.

The following arguments are supported:

disable_high_cardinality_metrics is the Grafana Alloy equivalent to the telemetry.disableHighCardinalityMetrics feature gate in the OpenTelemetry Collector. It removes attributes that could cause high cardinality metrics. For example, attributes with IP addresses and port numbers in metrics about HTTP and gRPC connections are removed.

level is the Alloy equivalent to the telemetry.metrics.level feature gate in the OpenTelemetry Collector. Possible values are "none", "basic", "normal" and "detailed".

Exported fields

The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:

input accepts otelcol.Consumer data for any telemetry signal (metrics, logs, or traces).

Component health

otelcol.exporter.debug is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration.

Debug information

otelcol.exporter.debug does not expose any component-specific debug information.

Example

This example receives OTLP metrics, logs, and traces and writes them to the console:

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otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
    grpc {}
    http {}

    output {
        metrics = [otelcol.exporter.debug.default.input]
        logs    = [otelcol.exporter.debug.default.input]
        traces  = [otelcol.exporter.debug.default.input]
    }
}

otelcol.exporter.debug "default" {}

Compatible components

otelcol.exporter.debug has exports that can be consumed by the following components:

• Components that consume OpenTelemetry otelcol.Consumer