Exporting traces does not work with OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT but it does work with OTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_ENDPOINT env variables.

[JayeshHire]

I was trying to instrument my fastapi application for collecting traces.
I had environment variables with the below values for exporting traces and I was exporting them to the jaegar instance which was running in docker container.

OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER="otlp"
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="127.0.0.1:4317"
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL="grpc"

With the above values my application was not able to find the traces' backend.
However, when I omitted the above variables and then tried to set below env variables, my application was successfully exporting traces to the jaegar instance.
Below are the environment variables with which my setup is working.

OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER="otlp"
OTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_ENDPOINT="127.0.0.1:4317"
OTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_PROTOCOL="grpc"

Are the environment variables OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT and OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL removed from the latest version in the sdk?
Because, if they are then it should clearly be reflected in the documentation.

[pmcollins]

Hi, does it work for you when you specify the scheme? e.g. OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://127.0.0.1:4317".

[JayeshHire]

My backend is not able to send traces to the jaeger when I am configuring my environment variables as OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT and OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL. But it is working when I am setting the endpoint and protocol for traces exporter using environment variables, OTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_ENDPOINT and OTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_PROTOCOL.

By the way I am on windows machine, if it matters here.

Below are the screen shots of the configuration and error which I received for that configuration.

This is the image of my environment variables configuration.

This is the image of error which the opentelemetry agent recorded when it tried to export traces to jaeger.

[Lujain-ALghamdi]

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT and OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL have not been removed. They are still part of the standard OTLP exporter configuration.

The likely issue is the endpoint value.

For OTLP/gRPC, try specifying the scheme explicitly:

OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4317
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

instead of:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=127.0.0.1:4317

The OpenTelemetry OTLP exporter specification supports OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT as the common endpoint for all signals, while signal-specific variables such as:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_PROTOCOL

override the common configuration for traces.

So both approaches are valid:

# Common OTLP configuration
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4317
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

or:

# Trace-specific configuration
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4317
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_PROTOCOL=grpc

The trace-specific configuration takes precedence when it is set.

Since you are exporting directly to Jaeger over OTLP/gRPC, also make sure Jaeger's OTLP receiver is actually listening on port 4317 and that the port is reachable from the process/container running the application.

So the environment variables are still supported; I would first try adding the http:// scheme to the common OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT.