Send logs with the OpenTelemetry Collector

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Prerequisites

• A running Rootprint instance. Substitute its host for <your-rootprint>.
• An ingest API key scoped to otel-logs-v0_9. Create one in Settings → API keys with Create ingest key, then substitute it for <your-ingest-api-key>. See API keys.
• A Linux host, with Docker Compose if you run the Collector in a container.
• The Collector Contrib distribution (otelcol-contrib), v0.149 or newer. The core distribution has no file_log receiver.

receivers:
  file_log:
    include:
      - /var/log/myapp/*.log
    start_at: end
    resource:
      service.name: myapp

processors:
  batch: {}

exporters:
  otlp_http:
    logs_endpoint: https://<your-rootprint>/v1/logs
    compression: gzip
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer <your-ingest-api-key>"

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [file_log]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp_http]

services:
  rootprint-otelcol:
    image: otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest
    container_name: rootprint-otelcol
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: ["--config=/etc/otelcol/config.yaml"]
    volumes:
      - ./otel-config.yaml:/etc/otelcol/config.yaml:ro
      - /var/log/myapp:/var/log/myapp:ro

docker compose up -d rootprint-otelcol

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/myapp
echo "$(date -Iseconds) hello from the otel collector" | sudo tee -a /var/log/myapp/test.log

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What the config does

• file_log: emits one record per line, with the raw line in body. To parse fields out of the line, add a json_parser or regex_parser under the receiver’s operators.
• resource: sets the service.name resource attribute, which fills Rootprint’s service_name column.
• logs_endpoint: the full URL, including /v1/logs. Don’t use endpoint, which appends the path itself.
• batch: groups records before export. Tune send_batch_size and timeout for latency or batch size.

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Troubleshooting

• unknown type: "file_log" or unknown type: "otlp_http" on startup: you are running the core Collector or a Contrib release older than v0.149. Install or upgrade otelcol-contrib.
• 401/403/413/415: see Response codes.

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Related

• Send logs from Docker: collect every container’s stdout instead of specific files.
• Send logs from Kubernetes: run the Collector as a DaemonSet.
• OTLP reference: endpoint, response codes, limits.
• Indexes: the otel-logs-v0_9 schema.