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fix(appsec): silence spurious errors when DD_REMOTE_CONFIGURATION_ENABLED=false#4612

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dario.castane/issue-4404-appsec
Apr 13, 2026
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fix(appsec): silence spurious errors when DD_REMOTE_CONFIGURATION_ENABLED=false#4612
gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d[bot] merged 1 commit into
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dario.castane/issue-4404-appsec

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@darccio

@darccio darccio commented Mar 27, 2026 •
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What does this PR do?

When DD_REMOTE_CONFIGURATION_ENABLED=false, the RC client is never started, so any subsequent Subscribe() calls return ErrClientNotStarted. Two noisy log messages were emitted as a result:

  • ERROR in appsec: AppSec in RCStandby mode (DD_APPSEC_ENABLED unset) called enableRemoteActivation(), which failed with ErrClientNotStarted. This was treated as an unexpected error and logged with the alarming "No security activities will be collected" message, even though AppSec was never requested by the user.

  • WARN in tracer: startRemoteConfig() called Subscribe() after Start() silently no-op'd, producing a confusing "startup error" warning.

Both are expected when RC is deliberately disabled. Check for ErrClientNotStarted and log at debug level instead.

Motivation

Closes #4404

Reviewer's Checklist

  • Changed code has unit tests for its functionality at or near 100% coverage.
  • System-Tests covering this feature have been added and enabled with the va.b.c-dev version tag.
  • There is a benchmark for any new code, or changes to existing code.
  • If this interacts with the agent in a new way, a system test has been added.
  • New code is free of linting errors. You can check this by running make lint locally.
  • New code doesn't break existing tests. You can check this by running make test locally.
  • Add an appropriate team label so this PR gets put in the right place for the release notes.
  • All generated files are up to date. You can check this by running make generate locally.
  • Non-trivial go.mod changes, e.g. adding new modules, are reviewed by @DataDog/dd-trace-go-guild. Make sure all nested modules are up to date by running make fix-modules locally.

Unsure? Have a question? Request a review!

@darccio
darccio requested review from a team as code owners March 27, 2026 17:11
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datadog-prod-us1-4 Bot commented Mar 27, 2026 •
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✅ Tests

🎉 All green!

❄️ No new flaky tests detected
🧪 All tests passed

🎯 Code Coverage (details)
• Patch Coverage: 50.00%
• Overall Coverage: 60.05% (+3.91%)

This comment will be updated automatically if new data arrives.
🔗 Commit SHA: f8543ea | Docs | Datadog PR Page | Was this helpful? React with 👍/👎 or give us feedback!

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pr-commenter Bot commented Mar 27, 2026

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Benchmarks

Benchmark execution time: 2026-03-27 17:37:49

Comparing candidate commit f8543ea in PR branch dario.castane/issue-4404-appsec with baseline commit ee8dce2 in branch main.

Found 0 performance improvements and 0 performance regressions! Performance is the same for 215 metrics, 9 unstable metrics.

Explanation

This is an A/B test comparing a candidate commit's performance against that of a baseline commit. Performance changes are noted in the tables below as:

  • 🟩 = significantly better candidate vs. baseline
  • 🟥 = significantly worse candidate vs. baseline

We compute a confidence interval (CI) over the relative difference of means between metrics from the candidate and baseline commits, considering the baseline as the reference.

If the CI is entirely outside the configured SIGNIFICANT_IMPACT_THRESHOLD (or the deprecated UNCONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD), the change is considered significant.

Feel free to reach out to #apm-benchmarking-platform on Slack if you have any questions.

More details about the CI and significant changes

You can imagine this CI as a range of values that is likely to contain the true difference of means between the candidate and baseline commits.

CIs of the difference of means are often centered around 0%, because often changes are not that big:

---------------------------------(------|---^--------)-------------------------------->
                              -0.6%    0%  0.3%     +1.2%
                                 |          |        |
         lower bound of the CI --'          |        |
sample mean (center of the CI) -------------'        |
         upper bound of the CI ----------------------'

As described above, a change is considered significant if the CI is entirely outside the configured SIGNIFICANT_IMPACT_THRESHOLD (or the deprecated UNCONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD).

For instance, for an execution time metric, this confidence interval indicates a significantly worse performance:

----------------------------------------|---------|---(---------^---------)---------->
                                       0%        1%  1.3%      2.2%      3.1%
                                                  |   |         |         |
       significant impact threshold --------------'   |         |         |
                      lower bound of CI --------------'         |         |
       sample mean (center of the CI) --------------------------'         |
                      upper bound of CI ----------------------------------'

@eliottness

eliottness commented Mar 30, 2026

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@codex review

@chatgpt-codex-connector

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot commented Mar 30, 2026

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Codex Review: Didn't find any major issues. Keep them coming!

ℹ️ About Codex in GitHub

Your team has set up Codex to review pull requests in this repo. Reviews are triggered when you

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  • Mark a draft as ready
  • Comment "@codex review".

If Codex has suggestions, it will comment; otherwise it will react with 👍.

Codex can also answer questions or update the PR. Try commenting "@codex address that feedback".

@gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d
gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d Bot merged commit c323622 into main Apr 13, 2026
239 checks passed
@gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d
gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d Bot deleted the dario.castane/issue-4404-appsec branch April 13, 2026 08:17
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@genesor genesor genesor approved these changes
@eliottness eliottness eliottness approved these changes

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Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

[BUG]: Unexpected errors and warning with RemoteConfig

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@darccio @eliottness @genesor