openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Gateway OOM: Node.js exceeds default V8 heap limit with cron jobs [2 comments, 3 participants]

Description

OpenClaw gateway process silently exits when processing cron jobs, exceeding V8's default ~1.5GB heap limit. The process vanishes without a crash log, SIGTERM, or OOM message — systemd just sees it disappear and restarts it via Restart=always.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.3.13 (61d171a)
• OS: WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04 on Windows 11
• Node: v22.22.1
• Agent model: anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
• Cron jobs: 10 scheduled jobs (5 posting slots, analytics, mentions check, nightly reflection, weekly strategy, git snapshot)

Reproduction

1. Configure ~10 cron jobs with sessionTarget: "isolated"
2. Let the gateway go offline for several hours (WSL idle shutdown, etc.)
3. Restart the gateway — all missed cron jobs fire simultaneously
4. Gateway memory spikes to 1.6-1.7GB within ~20 seconds
5. Node process exits silently (no error in journalctl, no OOM in dmesg)
6. systemd restarts it, queued jobs fire again, repeat

Even with staggered jobs (not all firing at once), individual cron job processing peaks at 1.4-1.6GB for a single Haiku agent turn with a ~12KB SOUL.md.

Evidence

systemd: openclaw-gateway.service: Consumed 42.463s CPU time, 1.7G memory peak, 0B memory swap peak.

No kernel OOM kill in dmesg. No SIGTERM logged. Process just vanishes between journal entries.

Workaround

Added --max-old-space-size=4096 to the systemd ExecStart line:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/node --max-old-space-size=4096 /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/index.js gateway --port 18789

This resolves the crash — gateway survives 1.6GB peaks and memory settles back to ~500-600MB after processing.

Expected Behavior

A gateway running Haiku with 10 cron jobs should not need 1.7GB of heap. Either:

• Memory usage should be lower (agent sessions should be more memory-efficient)
• The gateway should set a reasonable --max-old-space-size by default in its systemd unit template
• Cron job catchup should be throttled (don't fire all missed jobs simultaneously)

Additional Context

The openclaw gateway command generates the systemd unit file automatically. The generated unit does not include any --max-old-space-size flag, leaving Node at its default ~1.5GB limit which is insufficient for normal operation with multiple cron jobs.