Collecting Application Logs from Log file

Overview

This guide provides detailed instructions on configuring the OpenTelemetry Collector to read logs from a file and push them to SigNoz, enabling you to analyze your application logs effectively.

Sample Log File

As an example, we can create a sample log file called app.log with the following dummy data:

This is log line 1
This is log line 2
This is log line 3

This file represents a log file of your application. You can choose any file which contains your application's log entries.

Collect Logs in SigNoz Cloud

Prerequisite

• SigNoz cloud account

Sending logs to SigNoz cloud can be achieved by following these simple steps:

• Installing OpenTelemetry Collector
• Configuring filelog receiver

Install OpenTelemetry Collector

The OpenTelemetry collector provides a vendor-neutral way to collect, process, and export your telemetry data such as logs, metrics, and traces.

You can install OpenTelemetry collector as an agent on your Virtual Machine by following this guide.

Configure filelog receiver

Modify the config.yaml file that you created while installing OTel collector in the previous step to include the filelog receiver. This involves specifying the path to your app.log file and setting the start_at parameter, which specifies where to start reading logs from the log file. For more fields that are available for filelog receiver please check this link.

receivers:
  ...
  filelog/app:
    include: [ /tmp/app.log ] #include the full path to your log file
    start_at: end
...

Update Pipelines Configuration

In the same config.yaml file, update the pipeline settings to include the new filelog receiver. This step is crucial for ensuring that the logs are correctly processed and sent to SigNoz.

service:
    ....
    logs:
        receivers: [otlp, filelog/app]
        processors: [batch]
        exporters: [otlp]

Now restart the OTel collector so that new changes are applied. The steps to run the OTel collector can be found here

Verify Export

The logs will be exported to SigNoz UI. If you add more entries to your app.log file they will also be visible in SigNoz UI.

Collecting Logs in self-hosted SigNoz

Collecting logs in Self-Hosted SigNoz can have two scenarios:

• SigNoz running on the same host
• SigNoz running on different host

Running on the same host

If your self-hosted SigNoz is running on the same host, then you can follow these steps to collect your application logs.

Install SigNoz

You can install Self-Hosted SigNoz using the instructions here.

Modify Docker Compose file

In your self-hosted SigNoz setup, locate and edit the docker-compose.yaml file found in the deploy/docker/clickhouse-setup directory. You'll need to mount the log file of your application to the tmp directory of SigNoz OTel collector.

  ...
  otel-collector:
  image: signoz/signoz-otel-collector:0.88.11
  command: ["--config=/etc/otel-collector-config.yaml"]
  volumes:
    - ~/<path>/app.log:/tmp/app.log
  ....

Replace <path> with the path where your log file is present. Please ensure that the file path is correctly specified.

Add filelog receiver

Add the filelog receiver to otel-collector-config.yaml which is present inside deploy/docker/clickhouse-setup directory in your self-hosted SigNoz setup. The configuration below tells the collector where to find your log file and how to start processing it.

receivers:
  ...
  filelog:
    include: [ /tmp/app.log ]
    start_at: end
...

For more fields that are available for filelog receiver please check this link.

Update Pipeline configuration

Modify the pipeline inside otel-collector-config.yaml to include the filelog receiver. This step is crucial for ensuring that the logs are correctly processed and sent to SigNoz.

service:
    ....
    logs:
        receivers: [otlp, filelog]
        processors: [batch]
        exporters: [clickhouselogsexporter]

Now, restart the OTel collector so that new changes are applied. You can find instructions to run OTel collector here

Verify Export

The logs will be exported to SigNoz UI if there are no errors. If you add more entries to your app.log file they will also be visible in SigNoz.

Running on a different host

If you have a SigNoz running on a different host then you will have to run a OTel collector to export logs from your host to the host where SigNoz is running.

Create OTel collector configuration

You need to create an otel-collector-config.yaml file, this file defines how the OTel collector will process and forward logs to your SigNoz instance.

receivers:
  filelog:
    include: [ /tmp/app.log ]
    start_at: end
processors:
  batch:
    send_batch_size: 10000
    send_batch_max_size: 11000
    timeout: 10s
exporters:
  otlp/log:
    endpoint: http://<host>:<port>
    tls:
      insecure: true
service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [filelog]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [ otlp/log ]

The parsed logs are batched up using the batch processor and then exported to the host where SigNoz is deployed. For finding the right host and port for your SigNoz cluster please follow the guide here.

Mount the log file

Run this docker command

docker run -d --name signoz-host-otel-collector --user root -v $(pwd)/app.log:/tmp/app.log:ro -v $(pwd)/otel-collector-config.yaml:/etc/otel/config.yaml signoz/signoz-otel-collector:0.88.11

The above command runs an OpenTelemetry collector provided by SigNoz in a Docker container. It runs in the background with root privileges, mounts a log file and a configuration file from the host to the container

After running the collector, if there are no errors your logs will be exported and will be visible in SigNoz.