Environment variables¶

Every supported override begins with RFC6035_2OTEL_. Convert a YAML nesting boundary to __ and preserve single underscores in a field name. Environment overrides have the highest configuration precedence.

YAML key	Environment variable
`listen.address`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_LISTEN__ADDRESS`
`listen.port`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_LISTEN__PORT`
`otlp.endpoint`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_OTLP__ENDPOINT`
`otlp.protocol`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_OTLP__PROTOCOL`
`otlp.headers.<header>`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_OTLP__HEADERS__<HEADER>`
`dedupe_window`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_DEDUPE_WINDOW`
`log.level`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_LOG__LEVEL`
`service.name`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_SERVICE__NAME`
`service.version`	`RFC6035_2OTEL_SERVICE__VERSION`

For example:

export RFC6035_2OTEL_OTLP__ENDPOINT="https://collector.example.test"
export RFC6035_2OTEL_OTLP__HEADERS__AUTHORIZATION="Bearer replace-me"
export RFC6035_2OTEL_LISTEN__PORT="5060"

senders is a structured list and cannot be represented by the flat environment mapping. Keep it in YAML. Unknown environment keys fail rather than being ignored, so a misspelled secret variable cannot silently select unexpected defaults.

Standard OpenTelemetry resource environment¶

OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES is also read and attached to both metrics and logs. Use it for standard resource dimensions that are not application configuration, for example:

export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES="deployment.environment.name=production"

The configured service.name and service.version, plus the runtime service.instance.id, override those same keys from the OpenTelemetry environment. OTEL_SERVICE_NAME is therefore accepted by the SDK but the explicit configured service name remains authoritative. Telemetry SDK and host resource attributes are added automatically.