Description

Two bugs in the Podman/Quadlet installation path that break setup-podman.sh --quadlet on standard Linux systems.

Bug 1: sed escaping in setup-podman.sh line 227

The sed character class [\\/&|] includes / even though the sed delimiter is |. This causes forward slashes in $OPENCLAW_HOME (e.g., /home/openclaw) to be escaped as \/home\/openclaw, which Podman rejects as an invalid volume name.

Error:

Error: creating named volume "\/home\/openclaw/.openclaw": names must match [a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*

Current (line 227):

OPENCLAW_HOME_SED="$(printf '%s' "$OPENCLAW_HOME" | sed -e 's/[\\/&|]/\\\\&/g')"

Fix:

OPENCLAW_HOME_SED="$(printf '%s' "$OPENCLAW_HOME" | sed -e 's/[\\&|]/\\\\&/g')"

Since the sed substitution uses | as the delimiter (sed "s|...|...|g"), forward slashes don't need escaping.

Impact: Affects all installations (every Linux path contains /).

Bug 2: Missing User=%U:%G in Quadlet template

The Dockerfile sets USER node (UID 1000). When setup-podman.sh creates the openclaw system user, it may get a different UID (e.g., 1001 if UID 1000 is already taken). With UserNS=keep-id, the container process still runs as UID 1000 and cannot read config files owned by UID 1001.

Error:

Missing config. Run openclaw setup or set gateway.mode=local

(Config file exists but is unreadable due to UID mismatch.)

Fix — add User=%U:%G to scripts/podman/openclaw.container.in:

[Container]
Image=openclaw:local
ContainerName=openclaw
UserNS=keep-id
User=%U:%G          # Forces container process to run as the openclaw user's UID
...

Impact: Affects systems where UID 1000 is already assigned to another user.

Environment

• OS: CachyOS (Arch-based)
• Podman: 5.7.1 (rootless)
• Installation method: setup-podman.sh --quadlet

Suggested fix

Both fixes are minimal and backward-compatible. Happy to submit a PR if desired.