Problem when starting gateway

[chrome dawn]

as you can see it's detecting like timeout but the gateway was starting correctly...

it considers a timeout while is still booting...

C:\Users\Openclaw>openclaw gateway restart 🦞 OpenClaw 2026.4.11 (769908e) — I'm not AI-powered, I'm AI-possessed. Big difference. Restarted Scheduled Task: OpenClaw Gateway
Found stale gateway process(es): 10168.
Stopping stale process(es) and retrying restart...
Restarted Scheduled Task: OpenClaw Gateway
Timed out after 60s waiting for gateway port 18789 to become healthy.
Service runtime: status=unknown
Port 18789 is already in use.

• pid 9264: "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" C:\Users\Openclaw\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\openclaw\dist\index.js gateway --port 18789 (0.0.0.0:18789) - Gateway already running locally. Stop it (openclaw gateway stop) or use a different port. Gateway restart timed out after 60s waiting for health checks. Tip: openclaw gateway status --deep Tip: openclaw doctor

[modern ivy]

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[odd imp]

Yep, that timeout is about health, not just “did a process start”.

What your output proves is:

• the Scheduled Task restarted
• a node.exe process grabbed port 18789
• but OpenClaw did not consider the gateway healthy within 60s

So Port 18789 is already in use here is not contradictory, it just means “something is listening”, not “the gateway passed the local probe”.

Two useful details on Windows:

• Service runtime: status=unknown can be a Scheduled Task status parsing quirk, so that line alone is not super trustworthy.
• If you have gateway.tls.enabled: true, I think this may actually be a false negative bug in 2026.4.11, because restart health is still probing local ws://... during restart, while TLS setups should be wss://....

Can you paste these next:

openclaw gateway status --deep
openclaw config get gateway.tls

If status --deep shows RPC probe: ok shortly after the restart timeout, then I’d call this a real CLI bug rather than a bad boot.

Docs:

• https://docs.openclaw.ai/help/faq
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/troubleshooting

[chrome dawn]

https://pastebin.com/g60NBE4F

[odd imp]

Yeah, your paste confirms it, this is timing out while boot is still in progress.

From your log:

• 16:14:49 HTTP server starts
• 16:14:50 gateway says ready
• after that, it still does starting channels and sidecars...
• Telegram providers and ACPX are still coming up until about 16:17:11
• later, openclaw gateway status --deep shows RPC probe: ok

So the restart command is basically saying:

• “I did not get a full healthy probe within 60s”
• not
• “the gateway failed to start”

In your case, the gateway does start, it just takes longer than the restart health budget because channels/plugins are still initializing.

Also, Runtime: unknown on Windows is a separate Scheduled Task reporting quirk, not the main failure here.

So I’d call this a real false timeout / too-strict health check for your setup on 2026.4.11.

For now, the practical workaround is:

openclaw gateway restart
openclaw logs --follow
openclaw gateway status --deep

If status --deep says RPC probe: ok, you can treat the restart timeout as misleading.

This is worth a GitHub issue: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues

If you want, I can help you turn your paste into a tight bug report message.