In the Splunk distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector, what is the difference between the agent_config.yaml and the splunk-otel-collector.conf…

In Splunk’s OpenTelemetry Collector packages, the YAML files hold the pipeline logic, while the .conf file only provides environment variables the service consumes at startup.

• /etc/otel/collector/agentconfig.yaml is the main Collector configuration: it specifies receivers, processors, exporters, and builds the OpenTelemetry data pipelines.

• /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf is an environment file read by systemd; you place SPLUNKACCESSTOKEN, SPLUNKREALM, SPLUNKAPIURL, memory limits, and other endpoint-related variables here.

Hence, agentconfig.yaml defines the pipeline, and splunk-otel-collector.conf supplies endpoint URLs, tokens, and similar settings.

A. Reverses the actual roles; .conf holds env vars, YAML defines pipeline.

B. Memory limits live in the .conf env file; processors are part of the YAML pipeline, not the .conf file.

C. Gateway address is normally in the YAML config; memory limits in .conf, not vice-versa.

1. Splunk Observability Cloud Docs, “Install the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector for Linux”, section “Configuration files”, bullets 1–3 (docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/opentelemetry/collector-linux).

2. Splunk Observability Cloud Docs, “Environment variables for the Collector”, paragraph 1–2 (docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/opentelemetry/env-vars).

3. GitHub – splunk-otel-collector packaging README, “Default paths and files”, lines 20-35 (https://github.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector).