See here for instructions on installing the collector. We assume that systemd/systemctl are already set up. Check out the following OpenTelemetry journald receiver docs that provide additional guidance on installation.

Define your OpenTelemetry configuration.

Setup the Contrib OpenTelemetry collector. Check out our example here. Make sure that the journald directory is correct for your systemd/systemctl setup.

receivers:
    journald:
        directory: /var/log/journal
exporters:
    logging:
        sampling_initial: 10
        sampling_thereafter: 1000
    otlp/highlight:
        endpoint: 'https://otel.highlight.io:4317'
processors:
    attributes/highlight-project:
        actions:
            - key: highlight.project_id
              value: '<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>'
              action: insert
    batch:
service:
    pipelines:
        logs:
            receivers: [journald]
            processors: [attributes/highlight-project, batch]
            exporters: [otlp/highlight, logging]

Run the collector

Run the OpenTelemetry collector to start streaming the logs to highlight.

./otelcol-contrib --config=config.yaml

Verify your backend logs are being recorded.

Visit the highlight logs portal and check that backend logs are coming in.

Fluent Forward Syslog RFC5424