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← All break/fix scenarios in Observability

intermediatetempo-propagation~25 min

Break/Fix: Broken Trace Propagation

Reported symptoms

  • ●Trace IDs are not carried across services

Evidence

  • · A trace shows only the originator spans
Diagnosis and resolutionclick to reveal

Root cause

traceparent header is not handled.

Remediation

1. Verify SDK. 2. Verify header injection. 3. Verify header extraction.

Verification

Traces stitch end to end.

Prevention

End-to-end test of trace propagation

Scenario

You are operating a production observability platform. The following symptoms appear:

  • Trace IDs are not carried across services

Available evidence:

  • A trace shows only the originator spans

Your task

Determine the cause, recover, document, and validate.

Investigation

The investigation follows the discipline taught in Part XCVIII:

  1. Form hypothesis, find evidence, test, validate.
  2. Use the available evidence above to bound the search.
  3. Reach one of the likely root causes.

Recovery procedure

(Do not reveal until you have reasoned through the problem.)

  1. Identify the failing component.
  2. Apply the remediation pathway.
  3. Validate with the verification step.
  4. Document the incident.

Remediation

  1. Verify SDK. 2. Verify header injection. 3. Verify header extraction.

Verification

Traces stitch end to end.

Rollback

Revert

Prevention

End-to-end test of trace propagation