Check the kernel first with uname -r and confirm BTF and ring buffer support before installing. If the cluster is on an older kernel, disable eBPF tracing or fall back to the OpenTelemetry SDK path the docs describe. After any install or upgrade, restart the workloads so the instrumenters attach, then confirm in Live tail that traces are flowing before calling the setup done.

Context: Official docs (collector): documents the kernel and deploy gotchas that bite agents installing the Better Stack collector. eBPF-based auto-instrumentation needs Linux kernel 5.14 or newer with BTF, CO-RE, and the eBPF ring buffer, and after installing the collector you must restart your services so the eBPF instrumenters can attach. Skip the restart and you get a healthy-looking collector with no traces.