Troubleshooting Observability

When working with Observability, you might encounter the following issues.

GitLab Observability instance issues

Check container status:

docker ps

View container logs:

docker logs [container_name]

Menu doesn’t appear

1. Check that the Observability service URL is configured for your group:

   group = Group.find_by_path('your-group-name')
   group.observability_group_o11y_setting&.o11y_service_url

2. Ensure the routes are properly registered:

   Rails.application.routes.routes.select { |r| r.path.spec.to_s.include?('observability') }.map(&:path)

Performance issues

If experiencing SSH connection issues or poor performance:

• Verify instance type meets minimum requirements (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM).
• Consider resizing to a larger instance type.
• Check disk space and increase if needed.

Telemetry doesn’t show up

If your telemetry data isn’t appearing in GitLab Observability:

1. Verify ports 4317 and 4318 are open in your security group.

2. Test connectivity with:

   nc -zv [your-o11y-instance-ip] 4317
   nc -zv [your-o11y-instance-ip] 4318

3. Check container logs for any errors:

   docker logs otel-collector-standard
   docker logs o11y-otel-collector
   docker logs o11y

4. Try using the HTTP endpoint (4318) instead of gRPC (4317).

5. Add more debugging information to your OpenTelemetry setup.