---
title: "Using the OpenTelemetry Operator to Inject Auto-Instrumentation"
source: OpenTelemetry Documentation
source_url: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io
licence: CC-BY-4.0
domain: engineering
subdomain: opentelemetry-docs
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

If you run your Python service in Kubernetes, you can take advantage of the
[OpenTelemetry Operator](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator)
to inject auto-instrumentation without having to modify each of your services
directly.
[See the OpenTelemetry Operator Auto-instrumentation docs for more details.](/docs/platforms/kubernetes/operator/automatic/)

## Python-specific topics

### Libraries with binary wheels

Some Python packages we instrument or need in our instrumentation libraries,
might ship with some binary code. This is the case, for example, of `grpcio` and
`psutil` (used in `opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics`).

The binary code is tied to a specific C library version (glibc or musl) and to a
specific Python version. The
[OpenTelemetry Operator](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator)
provides images for a single Python version based on the glibc C library. If you
want to use it you might need to build your own image operator Docker image for
Python auto-instrumentation.

Since operator v0.113.0 it is possible to build an image with both glibc and
musl based auto-instrumentation and
[configure it at runtime](/docs/platforms/kubernetes/operator/automatic/#annotations-python-musl).

### Django applications

Applications that run from their own executable like Django requires to set in
your deployment file two environment variables:

- `PYTHONPATH`, with the path to the Django application root directory, e.g.
  "/app"
- `DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE`, with the name of the Django settings module, e.g.
  "myapp.settings"

### gevent applications

Since the OpenTelemetry Python 1.37.0/0.58b0 release if you set in your
deployment file the `OTEL_PYTHON_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_EXPERIMENTAL_GEVENT_PATCH`
environment variable to `patch_all` the auto-instrumentation code will call the
gevent monkeypatch method with the same name before initializing itself.
