Codex Desktop exits when inherited OTEL metrics exporter config is invalid

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Reproduced against codex-cli 0.143.0-alpha.29 app-server.

What subscription do you have?

Enterprise

What platform is your computer?

macOS arm64

What issue are you seeing?

Codex Desktop can fail to start when it inherits globally configured OTEL_* environment variables from the user's interactive shell.

The local app-server exits with code 1 and Desktop surfaces:

Codex failed to start.
(code=1, signal=null).
Most recent error: Error: error loading otel config: failed to build OTLP metrics exporter

Telemetry exporter construction is auxiliary and should not prevent Codex from starting.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Run app-server with an isolated Codex home and an invalid inherited OTLP compression setting:

env \
  CODEX_HOME=/tmp/codex-otel-repro \
  OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp \
  OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4317 \
  OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc \
  OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_COMPRESSION=snappy \
  codex app-server --analytics-default-enabled

Observed:

Error: error loading otel config: failed to build OTLP metrics exporter

The process exits with code 1.

What is the expected behavior?

App-server should warn, disable or skip OTEL, and continue startup.

This should match the existing TUI/exec behavior, which catches OTEL provider construction failures and continues with telemetry disabled.

Additional information

The fatal boundary is in codex-rs/app-server/src/lib.rs, where build_provider(...) errors are mapped to InvalidData and propagated with ?.

The equivalent TUI/exec paths catch exporter errors and continue with None.

Suggested regression coverage: invalid inherited OTLP environment must not make app-server --analytics-default-enabled exit during startup.