openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: Bonjour/CIAO unhandled rejections still crash gateway v2026.4.24 despite PR #71668 [1 comments, 2 participants]

Bug Report: Bonjour/CIAO unhandled rejections still crash gateway in v2026.4.24

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.4.24 (cbcfdf6)
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04 (Linux 6.8.0-106-generic)
• Runtime: Node 22.22.2
• Install method: npm global (/usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw)
• Gateway mode: local (systemd service)

Description

Despite PR #71668 ("fix(bonjour): suppress CIAO PROBING CANCELLED across plugin module instances") which was merged on April 25, 2026 and supposedly fixes the bonjour crash issue, the gateway still crashes with unhandled promise rejections related to CIAO/Bonjour:

[openclaw] Unhandled promise rejection: CIAO PROBING CANCELLED
[openclaw] Unhandled promise rejection: CIAO ANNOUNCEMENT CANCELLED

The crash occurs approximately 30 seconds after gateway startup, consistently reproducible.

Steps to reproduce

1. Start gateway with bonjour plugin enabled (default)
2. Wait ~30 seconds
3. Bonjour advertiser detects service not announced
4. Attempts to re-advertise but gets stuck in "probing" state
5. After ~15 seconds, CIAO cancellation triggers
6. Unhandled rejection crashes entire gateway

Expected behavior

Gateway should not crash on CIAO cancellation rejections. Bonjour/mDNS is a nice-to-have feature - it should never be fatal to the core service.

Actual behavior

Gateway crashes with exit code 1. Systemd restarts immediately, creating an infinite crash loop.

Logs

[bonjour] watchdog detected non-announced service; attempting re-advertise (gateway fqdn=ubuntu (OpenClaw)._openclaw-gw._tcp.local. host=openclaw.local. port=18789 state=probing)
[bonjour] restarting advertiser (service stuck in probing for 15188ms ...)
[bonjour] advertised gateway fqdn=ubuntu (OpenClaw)._openclaw-gw._tcp.local. host=openclaw.local. port=18789 state=unannounced
[openclaw] Unhandled promise rejection: CIAO ANNOUNCEMENT CANCELLED
[openclaw] wrote stability bundle: ...unhandled_rejection.json
systemd[323245]: openclaw-gateway.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE

Workaround

Setting plugins.entries.bonjour.enabled: false in the config prevents the crashes, but this is not documented and users may not know to do this.

Additional context

The "last known good" config restoration mechanism causes issues when invalid config values are set. When models.mode: override was set (which is not a valid value - only "merge" and "replace" are allowed), the gateway crashed with:

config reload skipped (invalid config): models.mode: Invalid input (allowed: "merge", "replace")

This suggests the config validation and restoration mechanism could be improved.

Related issues

• PR #71668 ( supposedly fixes this but doesn't appear to work)
• Issue #72234 (Bonjour/CIAO cancellation crashes gateway on startup)
• Issue #42698 (fix for IPv4 assertion crashes)

Priority

This is a high severity bug because it makes the gateway unusable on Linux servers with the default bonjour plugin enabled.