Install Observe Agent on Linux

Install the Observe Agent

Debian-based distributions

Install the observe-agent package. You’ll need to first add the Observe debian repository to your trusted depositories in your sources.list.d file.

echo 'deb [trusted=yes] https://repo.observeinc.com/apt/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/observeinc.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install observe-agent

To validate that the agent is installed correctly, you can run the version command.

observe-agent version

RedHat-based distributions

Install the observe-agent package. You’ll need to first add the Observe yum repository to your trusted repositories in your yum.repos.d folder.

echo '[fury]
name=Gemfury Private Repo
baseurl=https://yum.fury.io/observeinc/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0' | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/fury.repo

sudo yum install observe-agent

To validate that the agent is installed correctly, you can run the version command.

observe-agent version

Configure the Observe Agent

Debian-based distributions

Open the agent config file /etc/observe-agent/observe-agent.yaml with superuser permissions which will allow you to edit and save changes to the file.

sudo vim /etc/observe-agent/observe-agent.yaml

Replace the contents of the agent configuration file with the config file below. Replace ${OBSERVE_TOKEN} and ${OBSERVE_COLLECTION_ENDPOINT} with the appropriate values and run on each host. For more information on configuring the agent, see Configuration.

# Observe data token (ex: a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9k0:l1m2n3o4p5q6r7s8t9u0v1w2x3y4z5a6)
token: "${OBSERVE_TOKEN}"

# Target Observe collection url (ex: https://123456789012.observeinc.com/)
observe_url: "${OBSERVE_COLLECTION_ENDPOINT}"

host_monitoring:
  enabled: true
  logs: 
    enabled: true
  metrics:
    enabled: true

# otel_config_overrides:
#   exporters:
#     debug:
#       verbosity: detailed
#       sampling_initial: 5
#       sampling_thereafter: 200
#   service:
#     pipelines:
#       # This will override the existing metrics/host_monitoring pipeline and output to stdout debug instead
#       metrics/host_monitoring:
#         receivers: [hostmetrics/host-monitoring]
#         processors: [memory_limiter]
#         exporters: [debug]

RedHat-based distributions

Open the agent config file /etc/observe-agent/observe-agent.yaml with superuser permissions which will allow you to edit and save changes to the file.

sudo vi /etc/observe-agent/observe-agent.yaml

Replace the contents of the agent configuration file with the config file below. Replace ${OBSERVE_TOKEN} and ${OBSERVE_COLLECTION_ENDPOINT} with the appropriate values and run on each host. For more information on configuring the agent, see Configuration.

# Observe data token (ex: a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9k0:l1m2n3o4p5q6r7s8t9u0v1w2x3y4z5a6)
token: "${OBSERVE_TOKEN}"

# Target Observe collection url (ex: https://123456789012.observeinc.com/)
observe_url: "${OBSERVE_COLLECTION_ENDPOINT}"

host_monitoring:
  enabled: true
  logs: 
    enabled: true
  metrics:
    enabled: true

# otel_config_overrides:
#   exporters:
#     debug:
#       verbosity: detailed
#       sampling_initial: 5
#       sampling_thereafter: 200
#   service:
#     pipelines:
#       # This will override the existing metrics/host_monitoring pipeline and output to stdout debug instead
#       metrics/host_monitoring:
#         receivers: [hostmetrics/host-monitoring]
#         processors: [memory_limiter]
#         exporters: [debug]

Start the Observe Agent

Now that the configuration is in place, you can start the agent with the following command

sudo systemctl enable --now observe-agent

You can then run the status command to see statistics and information about the agent.

observe-agent status

Configure application instrumentation

Once the Observe Agent is up and running on a Linux host, you can configure your application running on the same Linux host to send telemetry data to the Observe Agent using one of the following addresses:

• OTLP/HTTP endpoint: http://localhost:4318

• OTLP/gRPC endpoint: http://localhost:4317

Uninstall the Observe Agent

Debian-based distributions

You can uninstall the agent via apt after stopping the service.

sudo systemctl stop observe-agent
sudo apt-get purge observe-agent

RedHat-based distributions

You can uninstall the agent via yum after stopping the service.

sudo systemctl stop observe-agent
sudo yum erase observe-agent -y

Upgrade the Observe Agent

Debian-based distributions

Upgrade the package version. The install process will ask if you want to replace your existing config file. Generally the default answer of N (no) is correct.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --only-upgrade observe-agent

To apply the new configs and start the agent at the new version you can run the following command.

sudo systemctl restart observe-agent

RedHat-based distributions

Upgrade the package version. The install process will ask if you want to replace your existing config file. Generally the default answer of N (no) is correct.

sudo yum update observe-agent
sudo yum install observe-agent

To apply the new configs and start the agent at the new version you can run the following command.

sudo systemctl restart observe-agent