openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [v2026.4.24] Bonjour plugin keeps gateway in a permanent crash-restart loop because the unhandled-rejection handler is never wired [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

In v2026.4.24, the bonjour plugin defines a CIAO unhandled-rejection handler but never registers it with the global handler chain, because the plugin's entry point does not pass registerUnhandledRejectionHandler in deps.

When mDNS announce gets stuck for any reason (in our case macOS mDNSResponder already owning UDP/5353), the watchdog cancels the cycle, ciao throws CIAO ANNOUNCEMENT CANCELLED, the rejection bubbles up unhandled, OpenClaw's global handler exits the process, launchd restarts it, repeat — the gateway is in a permanent crash-restart loop.

Environment

• macOS 25.4.0 (arm64)
• OpenClaw v2026.4.24 (homebrew)
• Node v25.7.0

Symptoms

~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.err.log — every ~20s:

[plugins] bonjour: watchdog detected non-announced service; attempting re-advertise (gateway fqdn=… state=probing)
[plugins] bonjour: restarting advertiser (service stuck in announcing for 12700ms …)
[openclaw] Unhandled promise rejection: CIAO ANNOUNCEMENT CANCELLED
[openclaw] wrote stability bundle: …/unhandled_rejection.json

launchctl list ai.openclaw.gateway PID changes every ~20s — launchd kickstart loop.

Root cause

In dist/extensions/bonjour/index.js, createCycle() returns:

cleanupUnhandledRejection: services.length > 0 && deps.registerUnhandledRejectionHandler
    ? deps.registerUnhandledRejectionHandler(handleCiaoUnhandledRejection)
    : void 0

But the plugin entry only passes { logger: api.logger }:

return { stop: (await startGatewayBonjourAdvertiser({ … }, { logger: api.logger })).stop };

deps.registerUnhandledRejectionHandler is therefore undefined, the ternary always evaluates to void 0, the handler is never added to the global handlers Set, and installUnhandledRejectionHandler's fallback path (process.exit(1)) takes over.

Suggested fix

(a) Expose registerUnhandledRejectionHandler on PluginAPI and pass it through deps:

return { stop: (await startGatewayBonjourAdvertiser({ … }, {
    logger: api.logger,
    registerUnhandledRejectionHandler: api.registerUnhandledRejectionHandler,
})).stop };

(b) Additionally, consider hoisting the registration to function scope so it lives across createCycle / stopCycle cycles. The current per-cycle register/unregister pattern has a race: stopCycle's finally { cleanupUnhandledRejection() } deregisters the handler in the same microtask tick that ciao's cancellation rejection is queued — by the time the rejection reaches the event loop, the handler is gone again, and the global fallback fires.

Workaround

Setting OPENCLAW_DISABLE_BONJOUR=1 in the launchd plist (EnvironmentVariables) short-circuits isDisabledByEnv() and stabilizes the gateway, at the cost of losing LAN auto-discovery.