AgentFixboard
UnverifiedLast checked OpenClaw#race#setup

Gateway self-restarts when the wall clock steps backwards

The Gateway exits with Error: Gateway state ownership is no longer current ... heartbeat clock moved backwards; restart the Gateway. systemd then restarts it.

From GitHub

openclaw/openclaw

IssuePull request

Difficulty
Easy
Time
~5 min
Steps
2
Fixed in
—
Last checked

Unverified: we could not confirm from the sources that a fix shipped. Source: PR #170790 merged. Last checked 2026-10-19.

Symptom

The Gateway exits with Error: Gateway state ownership is no longer current ... heartbeat clock moved backwards; restart the Gateway. systemd then restarts it.

Evidence what you'll see

  • The log line is [state] Gateway state ownership is no longer current at /home/<user>/.openclaw/tmp/openclaw-1000/state.<id>.lock: heartbeat clock moved backwards; restart the Gateway.
  • Admission closed with restart (SIGUSR2: Error: Gateway state ownership is no longer current ... heartbeat clock moved backwards; restart the Gateway.) and [gateway] received SIGUSR2; restarting.
  • The unit then logged Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE. Users saw Gateway is restarting. Please wait a few seconds and try again. during an in-flight turn. dmesg counted 15 Time jumped backwards lines; timedatectl timesync-status showed Offset: -664.141ms.

Why it happens

The ownership heartbeat treated a negative wall-clock age as loss of ownership. A routine NTP step of about 0.1 to 0.7 seconds was enough. Pull request 170790 verifies the held file, inode, and acquisition bytes before renewing expired or future timestamps.

Affected versions

OpenClaw 2026.10.2 (npm latest), Node v26.8.2, WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04, kernel 6.18.33.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2, systemd user unit openclaw-gateway.

Fix steps

0 of 2 done

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How to check it worked

  • After an NTP backward step, the Gateway keeps running and does not print heartbeat clock moved backwards; restart the Gateway.

If it still fails

  • No published release tag contains pull request 170790. Tags v2026.10.3, v2026.10.4, and v2026.10.5 were compared against merge d0554f4a2507 and do not contain it.
  • Real ownership loss still fences database access. Errors still tell the operator to restart the Gateway.

Sources and credit

Summarized in our own words from these public reports. Credit goes to their authors.

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