Add a collector

A “collector” is the data plane — the OpenTelemetry runtime (Grafana Alloy or otelcol-contrib) that actually receives, processes, and ships your telemetry. LinkMesh is the control plane that configures it. This page helps you pick how to connect one.

The collector runtime is always upstream

Whichever path you choose below, the collector runtime is upstream Grafana Alloy or upstream otelcol-contrib, installed from its own packages. The linkmesh-agent one-liner installs the agent (a small management client), not a collector.

Three paths

Path	Runtime	LinkMesh agent?	Best for
Managed	Grafana Alloy	Yes — installs + supervises Alloy	One-command setup, lifecycle control, fleets you want LinkMesh to operate
Standards — Alloy	Grafana Alloy	No (agentless)	You already run / prefer Alloy and want LinkMesh to push config via remotecfg
Standards — otelcol	otelcol-contrib	No (agentless)	You already run the OpenTelemetry Collector and want OpAMP-managed config

All three give you central config push, fleet status, and per-component throughput on the topology canvas. They’re alternatives, not stages — pick one per host (you can mix paths across a fleet).

Standards — Grafana Alloy + remotecfg Agentless. Install upstream Alloy, add a remotecfg block, paste a token.

Standards — otelcol-contrib + OpAMP Agentless. Install upstream otelcol-contrib, add an OpAMP extension.

Managed path: the agent one-liner

The managed path installs linkmesh-agent, which then installs and supervises upstream Grafana Alloy for you. Mint a token from Collectors → + Add Collector → Agent (or Settings → Enrollment Tokens) and run:

curl -fsSL https://linkmesh.io/install.sh | \
  LINKMESH_SERVER=https://your-server.example.com \
  LINKMESH_TOKEN=<token-from-wizard> \
  sudo -E sh

1. Adds the OpenSight APT/YUM repo and installs linkmesh-agent (the agent only — no collector yet).
2. Enrolls the agent against your server (POST /api/v1/bootstrap), writing its mTLS cert + config.yaml to /etc/linkmesh-agent/.
3. Restarts linkmesh-agent, which connects over gRPC.

Then install the collector runtime the agent will manage:

sudo linkmesh-agent install alloy

This installs upstream Grafana Alloy (via its OS package channel) at the pinned version and brings up the alloy service. The agent writes Alloy’s bootstrap config (remotecfg + own_metrics) and supervises it from there.

Tip

The install.sh one-liner is idempotent — re-running with a fresh token re-enrolls cleanly. It’s pure POSIX sh.

Verify (any path)

On the host:

# Managed: both services
systemctl is-active linkmesh-agent alloy
# Standards: just the collector you installed
systemctl is-active alloy          # or: otelcol-contrib

In the LinkMesh UI, open Collectors — the host appears with status Online/Connected and a tier badge for its path. Click in to see agent version (managed) or runtime, last-seen, and live throughput.

Next steps

• Build your first pipeline — wire the new collector through a processing pipeline to a destination.
• Enrollment tokens — TTL, scope, regeneration, audit visibility.
• Troubleshooting enrollment — when a host doesn’t show up.