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Configuration

Akari is configured entirely through PHP INI settings. The forwarder is configured separately through environment variables — see Forwarder.

INI settings

Setting Default Description
akari.enable 0 Enable tracing
akari.service_name (empty) OTel service name. When unset, falls back to the OTEL_SERVICE_NAME env var, then to php
akari.max_depth 64 Max call stack depth (1–256, clamped)
akari.min_duration_ms 0 Drop spans shorter than this (global threshold)
akari.event_dispatch_min_duration_ms 1 Drop fast Symfony/Shopware event dispatch spans while preserving other instrumentation
akari.udp_host 127.0.0.1 Forwarder UDP host
akari.udp_port 4319 Forwarder UDP port
akari.trace_compile 0 Profile file compilation time
akari.trace_gc 0 Profile GC collect cycles time
akari.trace_cli 1 Auto-create a root span for CLI runs, named after the command (e.g. php console asset:install, using the script basename). The full command line is recorded as the process.command_line attribute. Disable to skip the entry span unless markAsWebTransaction() is called
akari.flush_threshold 4096 Completed spans buffered before a mid-request flush

Targeted, APM-style instrumentation

Akari only creates spans for the function calls covered by its built-in instrumentation hooks (databases, HTTP clients, caches, messaging, frameworks) plus the per-request root span. There is no "trace every function" or sampling profiler mode — instrumentation is targeted, APM-style.

akari.enable=1
akari.service_name=app-prod
akari.min_duration_ms=1      ; drop sub-millisecond spans

akari.enable=1
akari.service_name=app-dev
akari.trace_compile=1        ; flag slow file compilation
akari.trace_gc=1             ; flag slow GC cycles

Tuning notes

  • min_duration_ms is the most effective overhead lever in production: raising it past 1 discards the long tail of fast spans before they are ever serialized or sent.
  • max_depth bounds how deep the call stack is captured. Lower it if you have deeply recursive code paths and only care about top-level spans.
  • udp_host / udp_port must match the forwarder's OTEL_FORWARDER_LISTEN address. The defaults (127.0.0.1:4319) assume the forwarder runs on the same host.