openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix gateway install --force: dist/index.js entrypoint causes plugin load failure (Unknown system error -11) under launchd

Summary

When the gateway plist entrypoint is set to dist/index.js (as set by gateway install --force), multiple plugins fail to load under launchd with Unknown system error -11: Unknown system error -11, read. The same binary and config works correctly when run directly in a shell.

Affected version

2026.5.12-beta.1, macOS 14 (arm64)

Steps to reproduce

1. Run openclaw gateway install --force — this sets the plist ProgramArguments to [..., /path/to/node, /path/to/dist/index.js, gateway, --port, 18789]
2. The gateway enters a restart loop. Plugins including canvas, device-pair, file-transfer, imessage, phone-control, slack, talk-voice, bonjour fail with the error below on every boot.

Error

[plugins] canvas failed to load from .../dist/extensions/canvas/index.js: Error: Unknown system error -11: Unknown system error -11, read
[plugins] 7 plugin(s) failed to initialize (load: canvas, device-pair, file-transfer, phone-control, talk-voice; register: imessage, slack)

Initially surfaces earlier as:

[secrets] [SECRETS_RELOADER_DEGRADED] Error: Unknown system error -11: Unknown system error -11, read
Gateway failed to start: Startup failed: required secrets are unavailable.

Workaround

Revert the plist entrypoint from dist/index.js to the npm-runtime wrapper (npm-runtime/node_modules/openclaw/openclaw.mjs). Gateway starts and all plugins load correctly.

<!-- broken (set by gateway install --force) -->
<string>/path/to/node</string>
<string>/path/to/dist/index.js</string>

<!-- working (original) -->
<string>/path/to/node</string>
<string>/path/to/npm-runtime/node_modules/openclaw/openclaw.mjs</string>

Investigation notes

• Error -11 on macOS is EDEADLK (resource deadlock avoided) — unusual for a file read() syscall
• Plugins that succeed (acpx, anthropic, duckduckgo, ollama) vs fail (canvas, imessage, slack, etc.) don't differ by native addon presence (none have .node binaries)
• Running dist/index.js directly in a shell with env -i and identical environment (including stdin=/dev/null, stdout/stderr to files) works fine — no plugin errors
• Issue appears specific to the launchd process context (audit session / kqueue interaction?)
• Node version not a factor: reproduced on both Homebrew Node 25.9.0 and nvm Node 22.22.2

Impact

gateway install --force leaves the gateway in a broken state that requires manual plist editing to recover. The secrets reloader error message is misleading — it looks like a config/auth problem, not an entrypoint problem.