Bug Report: Gateway Infinite Loop During Initialization on v2026.4.23+

Summary

OpenClaw gateway enters an infinite loop during startup on versions v2026.4.23 and v2026.4.24, consuming 100%+ CPU and never reaching the HTTP bind phase. The issue is not plugin-related and occurs even with a minimal configuration.

Affected Versions

• ❌ 2026.4.24 (cbcfdf6)
• ❌ 2026.4.23 (a979721)
• ✅ 2026.4.9 (0512059) — last known good

Environment

• OS: Linux x64 (RHEL 9)
• Node.js: v22.22.0 (via nvm)
• OpenClaw Install: npm install -g
• Gateway Port: 18789
• Agents: 10 active agents

Symptoms

1. Process Behavior

• Gateway parent (openclaw) starts normally
• Gateway child (openclaw-gateway) immediately consumes 100-160% CPU
• Process state: Rl (running, multithreaded) or Dl (disk sleep)
• Never transitions to HTTP server bind phase
• Port 18789 is never opened

2. systemd Behavior

• systemd restarts gateway repeatedly (observed NRestarts=45+)
• Lock file conflicts: "gateway already running (pid X); lock timeout after 5000ms"
• Port conflicts if old process hasn't exited

3. Log Pattern

[gateway] loading configuration…
[gateway] resolving authentication…
[gateway] starting...
# ... process hangs here, never reaches "starting HTTP server..."

4. Stability Bundles

Multiple unhandled_rejection stability bundles generated:

~/.openclaw/logs/stability/openclaw-stability-*-unhandled_rejection.json

Root Cause Analysis

V8 CPU Profiler Evidence

Collected via node --prof during the hang:

strace Evidence

The gateway child process repeatedly opens and reads the package.json file in an infinite loop:

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/.../node_modules/openclaw/package.json", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 24
read(24, "{\n  \"name\": \"openclaw\",\n  \"versi\"...", 8192) = 8192
read(24, "...", 8192) = 8192
# ... reads entire 72KB file ...
read(24, "", 8192) = 0
close(24) = 0
# Immediately reopens same file
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/.../node_modules/openclaw/package.json", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 24

Isolation Tests

The bug was confirmed not to be plugin-related by testing with a minimal configuration:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "googlechat": { "enabled": true }
    }
  }
}

Result: Same infinite loop (CPU 114%, process never starts HTTP server).

Diagnosis

The function resolvePackageRuntimeExtensionEntries in dist/discovery-DmIzxmAL.js enters infinite recursion while resolving the exports map from package.json during plugin/bundled module discovery. Each recursive call re-parses the 72KB package.json via json5, creating the observed I/O loop.

This likely relates to the changelog entry:

"Fixes Jiti loading of plugins with file:// scheme" (v2026.4.10)

The Jiti plugin loader fix may have introduced a recursive path resolution that doesn't terminate when processing the complex exports map in OpenClaw's package.json.

Impact

• Production systems cannot upgrade beyond v2026.4.9
• systemd enters restart storm (45+ restarts observed)
• All agents become unreachable via webhooks
• CPU saturation affects co-hosted services

Workarounds

• None available — the bug is in compiled dist/ code
• Rollback to v2026.4.9 is the only remediation

Reproduction Steps

# Environment: Linux x64, Node v22.22.0
npm install -g [email protected]

# Ensure clean state
pkill -9 -f "openclaw-gateway"
rm -f ~/.openclaw/.gateway.lock

# Even with minimal config:
cat > ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json << 'EOF'
{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "googlechat": { "enabled": true }
    }
  }
}
EOF

# Start gateway
openclaw gateway --port 18789

# Observe: process consumes 100%+ CPU, port never opens

Recommended Fix

Review resolvePackageRuntimeExtensionEntries in the discovery module to add:

1. Recursion depth limit when resolving exports map
2. Memoization/caching of already-resolved package paths
3. Cycle detection in package.json exports resolution

Attachments

• V8 profiler output: v8.log (available on request)
• strace capture: gateway.strace (available on request)
• Stability bundles: ~/.openclaw/logs/stability/*.json

Date: 2026-04-26 Severity: Critical (breaks production upgrades)