#has anyone ran into these issues lately: Error: session fileError: session file path must be within

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nova pendant
#

My agent just went dead on me today installing the new update...anyone else have trouble here?

pastel pilotBOT
#

That “Session file path must be within sessions directory” crash is a known regression in 2026.2.12 (often shows up right after an update/restart, especially with non-default agents). It was fixed on main for 2026.2.13.

Can you paste the output of:

  • openclaw --version

In the meantime, the usual fix path is:

  1. Update to 2026.2.13+ (or latest)
  2. Restart the gateway after the version change (openclaw gateway restart)
  3. If it still crashes: you likely have a bad sessionFile entry in the session store from the previous run (the update can leave it behind). Share the relevant stack trace / log snippet and we can point you to the exact file/entry to remove.

Troubleshooting doc (for where logs live, etc.): https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/troubleshooting

If updating to 2026.2.13+ + restart fixes it, please mark the solution in the thread (right-click the solution message → Apps → ✅ Mark Solution) so Answer Overflow indexes it.

nova pendant
#

2026.2.13 has not come out yet

pastel pilotBOT
#

Yep — you’re right: 2026.2.13 isn’t shipped yet. What did ship in 2026.2.12 is stricter session/transcript path validation (security hardening), and that can brick a gateway if your sessions.json contains a sessionFile override that’s now considered unsafe (absolute path or ../).

Fast workaround (usually fixes immediately)

  1. Stop the gateway
openclaw gateway stop
  1. Find your session store path
openclaw config get session.store

(Default is usually ~/.openclaw/agents/default/sessions/sessions.json.)

  1. Back it up
# 
cp ~/.openclaw/agents/default/sessions/sessions.json \
   ~/.openclaw/agents/default/sessions/sessions.json.bak
  1. Remove the sessionFile fields (safe; does not delete transcripts)
    If you have jq:
jq 'with_entries(.value |= del(.sessionFile))' \
  ~/.openclaw/agents/default/sessions/sessions.json \
  > /tmp/sessions.json && \
mv /tmp/sessions.json ~/.openclaw/agents/default/sessions/sessions.json

(If no jq: open the file and delete the "sessionFile": "..." lines.)

  1. Start gateway again