openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Matrix channel: staging rename fails with ENOTEMPTY on every gateway boot (Linux + Windows variants) [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

The bundled matrix channel cannot complete its staging step on a fresh install. Every gateway boot logs the same error and the channel never starts:

[channels] failed to load bundled channel matrix: ENOTEMPTY: directory not empty,
  rename '/root/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.24-XXXXXXXXXXXX/dist/extensions/.plugin-matrix-XXXXXX/plugin'
       -> '/root/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.24-XXXXXXXXXXXX/dist/extensions/matrix'

The destination extensions/matrix/ already contains files from an earlier staging step (or a prior boot), and Linux rename(2) on a non-empty directory returns ENOTEMPTY. The matrix plugin then fails to register and the channel never connects to a homeserver.

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.4.24 and 2026.4.25-beta.7 (both reproduce)
• Node v22.22.2 (NodeSource), npm 10.9.7 and 10.4.0
• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS in WSL2 on Windows 11; running as root
• Native Windows installation hits adjacent staging bugs that look like the same family:
  • Cannot find module 'C:\Users\…\node_modules\zod\index.cjs' for the mattermost plugin
  • Only URLs with a scheme in: file, data, and node are supported … Received protocol 'c:' (matrix channel ESM dynamic-import of bare C:\...\plugin\index.js)

Reproduction

1. npm install -g openclaw on Ubuntu 24.04
2. ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json configured with a matrix channel (homeserver / userId / accessToken)
3. Run gateway via systemd: systemctl start openclaw-gateway
4. Inspect log: every boot prints the ENOTEMPTY rename error for the matrix channel

Adjacent issue: native crypto binding not fetched

@matrix-org/matrix-sdk-crypto-nodejs ships a download-lib.js postinstall that fetches the platform-specific binary (matrix-sdk-crypto.linux-x64-gnu.node). The bundled-deps installer appears to use npm install --ignore-scripts, so the binding is never downloaded, and the matrix plugin fails crypto bootstrap with:

[plugins] matrix: crypto runtime bootstrap failed: Cannot find module '@matrix-org/matrix-sdk-crypto-nodejs-linux-x64-gnu'

Manually running node download-lib.js inside the package directory resolves this.

Workarounds attempted (none successful for the staging issue)

• rm -rf of dist/extensions/matrix/ and .plugin-matrix-* directories — gateway recreates partial content on next boot, then fails the same rename
• openclaw doctor --fix — completes successfully (Plugins panel shows Loaded: 65, Errors: 0) but the next gateway boot still fails the matrix staging
• Manual cp -r .plugin-matrix-XXX/plugin extensions/matrix — the staging directory is cleaned up before this can run reliably
• Downgrade to 2026.4.25-beta.7 — different timing but same ENOTEMPTY pattern

Suggested fix

The staging code that does rename(stagingDir, finalDir) should first fs.rmSync(finalDir, { recursive: true, force: true }) (or use fs.cpSync with { force: true, recursive: true } instead of rename). The current rename approach is incompatible with Linux semantics when finalDir already exists with content.

Related: bonjour watchdog kill loop

Likely a separate issue: under WSL2 NAT, the bonjour mDNS announce never reaches state=announced, the bonjour-plugin watchdog logs non-announced service; attempting re-advertise, and the gateway receives SIGTERM in the same second. This causes a 30-60 second restart loop. Renaming dist/extensions/bonjour/ removes this specific trigger but a separate ~60-second SIGTERM still fires from somewhere (possibly tied to the kill-tree-*.js module visible in dist/). Happy to file separately if useful.