Skip to main content

OTEL-020: Unused receiver

Severity: warn (advisory)

Rule Details​

A receiver defined in receivers: but not referenced in any service.pipelines.*.receivers: list will not receive anything — the Collector never starts it. These are almost always leftover from a refactor and cause a lot of confusion: "the config has otlp, why don't we see any traces?" Delete them or wire them up.

This rule fires when a receiver is declared but not used by any pipeline.

Options​

This rule has no options.

Examples​

Avoid
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: localhost:4317
  jaeger:                               # declared but unused
    protocols:
      grpc:

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [otlp/backend]
Prefer
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: localhost:4317

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [otlp/backend]

When Not To Use It​

Templated configs where a receiver is conditionally included by a deploy step may legitimately look "unused" to augur. If you can, gate the receiver at template level instead of leaving it dormant.

  • OTEL-021 — unused exporter
  • OTEL-022 — unused processor
  • OTEL-007 — every pipeline must have receivers and exporters

Version​

Available since augur v0.1.0.

Further Reading​

Resources​