getsentry / getsentry/sentry

Span status should be "unknown error" but is showing "unknown"

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#95,490 3 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee View on GitHub

@Dhrumil-Sentry is already working on this.

Since Jul 15, 2025.

Product Area: Insights
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Description

When sending spans to Sentry with a status of unknown_error, these show in the UI as having a status of unknown, which is confusing to SDK users.

This was originally reported in #2514 in the .NET SDK but I don't think it can be addressed in the SDK itself.

The SDK is sending the span as:

  {
    "span_id": "79ca9f101de64c64",
    "parent_span_id": "549459431681a0c1",
    "trace_id": "f5f184955e25c44a989428eb9613ae7f",
    "op": "Some sketchy business",
    "description": "Some sketchy business",
    "status": "unknown_error",
    "start_timestamp": "2025-07-14T21:53:13.321662+00:00",
    "timestamp": "2025-07-14T21:53:13.351699+00:00",
    "data": {
      "otel.status_description": "test with activity.RecordException",
      "otel.status_code": "ERROR",
      "otel.kind": "Internal"
    }
  }

So the status is quite clearly unknown_error and the data contains "otel.status_code": "ERROR".

However the UI in Sentry shows a status of unknown, which is a bit more ambiguous.

Image

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