otel-collector - Microsandbox

<Note> This recipe ships data emitted by [`msb-metrics`](/observability/msb-metrics). See the msb-metrics page for the flag reference, metric names, and deployment constraints. </Note>

Run the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector locally with a debug exporter to see exactly what msb-metrics is sending. Useful for development and for verifying metric names, attributes, and protocols before pointing at a real backend.

<Steps> <Step title="Install the collector"> Download `otelcol` (or `otelcol-contrib`) from the [official releases](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/releases), or run via Docker. </Step> <Step title="Configure the OTLP receiver + debug exporter"> Save as `otel-collector.yaml`:

```yaml
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318

exporters:
  debug:
    verbosity: detailed

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [debug]
```

</Step> <Step title="Start the collector"> ```sh otelcol --config=otel-collector.yaml ``` </Step> <Step title="Point msb-metrics at it"> ```sh msb-metrics otel --endpoint=http://localhost:4317 --log-level=debug ```

Boot a sandbox (`msb run alpine`) and watch metrics scroll past in
the otel-collector log. You should see records like
`microsandbox.cpu.utilization` with the configured resource and
identity attributes attached.

</Step> </Steps> <Note> The `debug` exporter replaced the older `logging` exporter in otel-collector v0.111.0. If your installation pre-dates that, use `exporters.logging` instead. </Note>

Verbosity levels

The verbosity field controls how much detail the debug exporter prints:

Level	Output
`basic` (default)	one summary line per export
`normal`	summary plus high-level metric names
`detailed`	full datapoint values and all attributes

Use detailed while verifying that attributes and units are correct; drop to basic once you're confident the pipeline works.