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Base configuration

Rotel is configured on the command line with multiple flags. See the table below for the full list of options. Rotel will also output the full argument list:

rotel start --help

All CLI arguments can also be passed as environment variable by prefixing with ROTEL_ and switching hyphens to underscores. For example, --otlp-grpc-endpoint localhost:5317 can also be specified by setting the environment variable ROTEL_OTLP_GRPC_ENDPOINT=localhost:5317.

Any option above that does not contain a default is considered false or unset by default.

OptionDefaultOptions
--daemon
--log-formattextjson
--pid-file/tmp/rotel-agent.pid
--log-file/tmp/rotel-agent.log
--debug-logmetrics, traces, logs
--debug-log-verbositybasicbasic, detailed
--otlp-grpc-endpointlocalhost:4317
--otlp-http-endpointlocalhost:4318
--otlp-grpc-max-recv-msg-size-mib4
--receiverotlpotlp, kafka
--exporterotlpotlp, blackhole, datadog, clickhouse, awsxray, awsemf, kafka
--batch-max-size8192
--batch-timeout200ms
--otel-resource-attributes
--enable-internal-telemetry

Retries and Timeouts

Requests will be retried if they match retryable error codes like 429 (Too Many Requests) or timeout. You can control the retry behavior globally for all exporters with the following options:

  • --exporter-retry-initial-backoff: Initial backoff duration (default: 5s)
  • --exporter-retry-max-backoff: Maximum backoff interval (default: 30s)
  • --exporter-retry-max-elapsed-time: Maximum wall time a request will be retried for until it is marked as a permanent failure (default: 300s)

These global retry settings apply to all exporters unless overridden by exporter-specific retry options (see individual exporter configuration pages for details).

Each exporter can also override the default request timeout. For example, the OTLP exporter default timeout of 5 seconds can be overridden with --otlp-exporter-request-timeout. All time options should be represented as string time durations, e.g. "250ms" for 250 milliseconds, "3s" for 3 seconds.

Component configuration

Next, select your configuration for receivers and exporters.