Get your collector configuration (when your collector was deployed with Helm)

Today, I wanted to paste my Collector config into otelbin.io, but I didn’t have the whole thing. When deploying with the official Helm chart, it combines the configuration you provide with some mysterious defaults of its own. How do you get the whole thing?

Here’s the answer in 3 steps:

1. Get the name of your pod

kubectl get pods

Find the full name of your pod. Mine is quiz-otelcol-b6b9f99dc-wvtd

2. Get the ConfigMap that stores your configuration

Here’s a spell:

kubectl get pod $POD_NAME -o json | jq .spec.volumes[].configMap

If you don’t have jq installed, then you can stop after -o json and read through it yourself.

In my case, I see a configmap called quiz-otelcol

3. Get the contents of the configmap

Here’s another spell:

kubectl get configmap $CONFIGMAP_NAME -o json | jq -r .data.relay > observed-config.yaml

That puts the content of the collector configuration in a file called observed-config.yaml.

There, now wasn’t that easy? (no)