Live Debugger Setup

  • Latest Dynatrace
  • 2-min read
  • Published Jan 29, 2025

Requirements

Live Debugger is available across the Code Monitoring rate card for Dynatrace SaaS deployments with DPS accounts, in environments configured to Full Stack monitoring mode, running Java and Node.js applications.

  • OneAgent comes with a large set of features that are activated by default. Nevertheless, you always need to explicitly activate features added by newer versions of OneAgent and opt-in features. For details see, OneAgent Features and API Configuration.

  • OneAgent version 1.309+ To enable Observability for Developers (Live Debugger), ensure that your OneAgent is up to date and deployed correctly.

Availability

Dynatrace Live Debugger is only available on Dynatrace SaaS deployments with a DPS account that has the Code Monitoring rate card associated with the account. Please contact a Dynatrace product expert via live chat within your environment. For further details about pricing, see the Code Monitoring documentation.

IAM service reference

All supported values for each IAM permission and condition are listed below. Use them to define access policies based on a fine-grained set of permissions and conditions that can be enforced per service. For more information, see Working with policies.

Set breakpoints

Grants permission to set user-level Live Debugging breakpoints.

Conditions:

  • dev-obs:k8s.namespace.name - the name of the namespace that the pod is running in.

    operators: IN, NOT IN, startsWith, NOT startsWith, =, !=

  • dev-obs:dt.entity.process_group - the process group your application is a part of.

    operators: IN, NOT IN, startsWith, NOT startsWith, =, !=

  • dev-obs:dt.process_group.detected_name – the detected name of the process group your application is a part of.

    operators: IN, NOT IN, startsWith, NOT startsWith, =, !=

Example policies:

  • Allow setting breakpoints for all instances:

    ALLOW dev-obs:breakpoints:set;
  • Allow setting breakpoints for a particular host group:

    ALLOW dev-obs:breakpoints:set WHERE dev-obs:dt.process_group.detected_name = "my_process_group";

Read snapshots

Grants permission to read user-level Live Debugging snapshots.

Example policies:

  • Allow read snapshots:
    ALLOW storage:application.snapshots:read;
    ALLOW storage:buckets:read WHERE storage:table-name = "application.snapshots";

Enable Live Debugging in ActiveGate

ActiveGate version 1.311+

An ActiveGate isn't strictly required for Live Debugging to work, but it significantly streamlines the process, especially in Kubernetes environments. It allows you to reduce your interaction with Dynatrace to one single point—available locally. Besides convenience, this solution optimizes traffic volume, reduces the complexity of the network and cost.

Host-Based Deployments

The Live Debugger module is enabled by default for host-based ActiveGate deployments starting from version 1.311+.

Kubernetes Operator Deployments

For Kubernetes Operator deployments, the Live Debugger module must be enabled via the ActiveGate capabilities section in the DynaKube configuration.

To enable the Live Debugger Module:

Set debugging capability in the DynaKube.yaml file.

activeGate:
capabilities:
- debugging

If you are using a proxy, configure it within the Environment ActiveGate as described in Proxy for ActiveGate.

Related tags
Application Observability