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Bonjour/ciao mDNS causes repeated gateway crashes on headless Linux (CIAO PROBING CANCELLED) #72344

@oc20260214

Description

@oc20260214

Bug Report: Bonjour/ciao mDNS plugin causes repeated gateway crashes on headless Linux VPS ("CIAO PROBING CANCELLED")

Version: 2026.4.24 (and previous weeks)

Environment:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 VPS (Contabo)
  • Headless
  • gateway.mode: local, bind: loopback
  • Both Avahi daemon (avahi-daemon) and OpenClaw's bonjour plugin active → mDNS stack conflict
  • avahi-daemon explicitly logs: *** WARNING: Detected another IPv4 mDNS stack running on this host. This makes mDNS unreliable...

Symptoms:

  • Bonjour plugin watchdog gets stuck in probing / announcing state for ~12-13 seconds.
  • Triggers unhandled promise rejection: CIAO PROBING CANCELLED or CIAO ANNOUNCEMENT CANCELLED.
  • Gateway process exits with status 1.
  • systemd restarts it in a tight loop.
  • Internal WS probe fails (ECONNRESET / timeout).
  • Multiple stability bundles created (see attached pattern).

Reproduction:

  1. Run on a Debian/Ubuntu system that has Avahi installed (common on VPS).
  2. Leave plugins.bonjour.enabled default (or even set to false — watchdog still runs).
  3. Observe gateway logs + journalctl -u openclaw-gateway.service.

Workaround that works:

"plugins": {
  "entries": {
    "bonjour": {
      "enabled": false,
      "logLevel": "silent"
    }
  }
}

(Disabling the plugin + suppressing logs stops the crashes.)

Requested fix:

  • Make the bonjour/ciao integration robust against other mDNS stacks (proper error handling on probing/announcement cancellation).
  • Or add auto-disable logic when Avahi is detected.
  • Prevent unhandled rejection from crashing the entire gateway.

Attached:

  • Multiple stability bundles from /root/.openclaw/logs/stability/ (latest ones from 2026-04-26)
  • journalctl excerpts showing the exact rejection
  • openclaw security audit --deep output (shows related exposure warnings but not this bug)

This has been a recurring source of instability on this VPS.

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