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Troubleshooting

Common failure modes, in the order you're likely to encounter them.

First stop for any issue:

zeroclaw doctor

Runs a series of checks and prints a summary. Most of what follows is the detailed version of what doctor flags.

Install-time

cargo not found

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Or pass --prebuilt to install.sh / setup.bat to skip Rust entirely.

Missing build dependencies (Linux)

Install the baseline toolchain for your distro, then re-run ./install.sh:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf group install development-tools && sudo dnf install pkg-config

# Arch
sudo pacman -S base-devel

Full per-distro list: Setup → Linux.

Build OOMs on low-RAM hosts

Compiling ZeroClaw from source needs ~2 GB RAM at peak. On a 512 MB Raspberry Pi, you will OOM.

Options:

  1. Use a prebuilt — ./install.sh --prebuilt skips the toolchain and downloads from GitHub Releases
  2. Cross-compile on a bigger machine and copy the binary
  3. Serialise the build — CARGO_BUILD_JOBS=1 cargo build --release --locked
  4. Add swap (works for RAM, costs disk — check you have both)

Build is very slow

The Matrix E2EE stack (matrix-sdk, ruma, vodozemac) and TLS/crypto native deps (aws-lc-sys, ring) are the main cost. Opt out if you don't need them:

cargo build --release --locked --no-default-features --features "default-lean"

Or check what's happening:

cargo check --timings
# report at target/cargo-timings/cargo-timing.html

zeroclaw: command not found after install

cargo install puts binaries in ~/.cargo/bin/. Add to PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

Persist in your shell profile.

Onboarding

Wizard insists on a config that doesn't exist

If an earlier install left ~/.zeroclaw/config.toml, re-run with --force:

zeroclaw onboard --force

Or just delete the directory and start over:

rm -rf ~/.zeroclaw
zeroclaw onboard

Homebrew-installed but wizard writes to the wrong path

Homebrew installs prefer $HOMEBREW_PREFIX/var/zeroclaw/ (so brew services works). The wizard warns if it detects this — set ZEROCLAW_WORKSPACE to the Homebrew path before onboarding:

export ZEROCLAW_WORKSPACE="$HOMEBREW_PREFIX/var/zeroclaw"
zeroclaw onboard

Or manually symlink once:

ln -s "$HOMEBREW_PREFIX/var/zeroclaw" ~/.zeroclaw

Runtime

Daemon starts, then immediately exits

Check journald / the platform log (see Logs & observability) for the actual error. Common causes:

  • Invalid config — zeroclaw config list to print resolved values, zeroclaw config schema to see the expected shape
  • Port conflict — another process on 42617; change [gateway] port or free the port
  • Missing secrets — encrypted secrets store can't decrypt because the key file is gone; restore from backup or re-run onboarding

Daemon keeps restarting

systemctl --user status zeroclaw shows the last exit. If it's a config error, it stopped restarting (exit 2) and you need to fix the config. If it's a panic, the unit retries every 10 s.

Enable debug logging and catch the next failure:

zeroclaw service stop
RUST_LOG=zeroclaw=debug zeroclaw daemon

Gateway unreachable

curl -sv http://localhost:42617/health

If connection refused: daemon isn't running, or it's bound to a different interface. Check [gateway] host / port in config.

If 403 / 401: pairing not completed or token expired. Run the pairing flow again.

Channels

Telegram: terminated by other getUpdates request

Two processes are polling the same bot token. Telegram only allows one poller at a time.

Fix: stop all but one zeroclaw daemon / zeroclaw channel start using that token.

Discord / Slack auth failures

Discord tokens expire if you regenerate them in the Developer Portal. Slack bot tokens don't expire but can be revoked. Check the bot is still installed in the target workspace/guild.

For either:

zeroclaw channel doctor discord
zeroclaw channel doctor slack

Matrix: "unknown device"

If you re-onboarded without keeping device keys, the homeserver sees a new device that hasn't been verified. Re-verify from another logged-in client, or reset the key store:

rm -rf ~/.zeroclaw/workspace/matrix-crypto
# re-run pairing flow on next channel start

IMAP polling stopped

Most often an auth failure — provider rotated the password or the app-password expired. Check:

journalctl --user -u zeroclaw -n 200 | grep -i imap

Providers

"Connection timed out" to Ollama

  • Ollama daemon not running: systemctl status ollama (Linux), brew services list (macOS)
  • Wrong URL in config — from inside a container, localhost:11434 doesn't reach the host; use host.docker.internal or the host's LAN IP
  • Firewall blocking port 11434 — rare locally, common on shared LANs

Anthropic / OpenAI 401

API key invalid or expired. Regenerate at the provider's dashboard, update in [providers.models.<name>] api_key, restart the service.

If using OAuth (sk-ant-oat*), the OAuth token may have expired — OAuth-issued tokens are longer-lived but not infinite. Re-authenticate.

Fallback chain always uses the fallback, never the primary

Check latency and error logs — the primary may be consistently timing out. If so, lower the retry count on the primary so it fails through faster, or fix whatever's making the primary flaky.

Tools

Shell commands "blocked by policy"

Expected behaviour at Supervised autonomy for unknown commands. Either:

  • Approve inline when prompted
  • Add the command to [autonomy] allowed_commands
  • Raise autonomy to Full if you trust the context

See Security → Autonomy levels.

Tool invocations fail inside Docker sandbox

  • Container image isn't pulled — docker pull zeroclawlabs/tool-runner
  • Docker daemon not reachable from the ZeroClaw user — check docker info
  • Tool needs a device that's not passed through — extend allow_devices

Browser tool hangs on first use

Playwright downloads Chromium (~150 MB) on first launch. Let it finish. If it keeps hanging, check disk space and proxy config.

Service mode

Service installed but shows inactive

zeroclaw service start
zeroclaw service status

If that succeeds interactively but the service dies in the background, it's almost always config or permissions — read the journal:

journalctl --user -u zeroclaw --since "5 minutes ago"

Service can't find config

The service and CLI may resolve config differently if they run as different users or with different env vars. Force-print the path the daemon sees:

zeroclaw config list

If the paths differ between zeroclaw config list (as you) and the service (as its user), either:

  • Set ZEROCLAW_CONFIG_DIR in the service unit's Environment=
  • Run the service as you (lingering-enabled user service)
  • Copy/symlink the config to the path the service expects

Still stuck?

Gather diagnostics and file an issue:

zeroclaw --version
zeroclaw doctor
zeroclaw channel doctor
journalctl --user -u zeroclaw --since "1 hour ago" > zeroclaw-log.txt

Sanitise zeroclaw-log.txt (redact channel tokens if any slipped through — they shouldn't) and attach it to the issue. See Contributing → Communication for where.

See also