#cannot start openclaw

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haughty pine
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Health check failed: gateway.auth.token secret reference could not be resolved: Environment variable "OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN" is missing or empty.
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tulip robinBOT
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inland jettyBOT
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That error means your config has gateway.auth.token set as a SecretRef to an env var, and at startup OpenClaw tries to resolve it — but the Gateway process doesn’t have OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN set, so it fails “closed” and won’t start.

Fix = make sure the env var exists in the environment the Gateway service runs with (not just your interactive shell):

Option A (recommended): put it in the global OpenClaw env file

On the gateway host, add to:

  • ~/.openclaw/.env (aka $OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR/.env)

Example:

echo 'OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN=your-long-random-token' >> ~/.openclaw/.env
openclaw gateway restart

Then re-run: