Neckr0ik Session Healer

Automatically detects and heals locked OpenClaw session files. Use when you see "session file locked" errors or models failing due to lock timeouts. Clears stale locks and recovers failed sessions.

Session Healer

Automatically detects and heals locked OpenClaw session files.

Quick Start

bash

# Check for locked sessions
neckr0ik-session-healer check

# Clear all stale locks
neckr0ik-session-healer heal

# Clear specific session lock
neckr0ik-session-healer unlock <session-id>

What This Fixes

The "session file locked" error occurs when:

• OpenClaw crashes while writing to a session
• Multiple processes try to access the same session
• Network timeout during session write
• System crash leaves stale lock files

Symptoms:

• "session file locked (timeout 10000ms)" errors
• All models fail with lock timeout
• Session becomes unresponsive

How It Works

1. Scans ~/.openclaw/agents/*/sessions/*.jsonl.lock files
2. Checks if the owning process is still alive
3. If process is dead, removes the stale lock
4. Optionally recovers session data if corrupted

Commands

check

bash

neckr0ik-session-healer check [--verbose]

Scans for locked sessions and reports:
- Lock file path
- Owning PID
- Process status (alive/dead)
- Lock age
- Session ID

heal

bash

neckr0ik-session-healer heal [--force]

Clears all stale locks (where owning process is dead).

Options:
  --force    Clear all locks, even for alive processes (dangerous)
  --dry-run  Show what would be cleared without doing it

unlock

bash

neckr0ik-session-healer unlock <session-id>

Clears a specific session lock by session ID.

recover

bash

neckr0ik-session-healer recover <session-id>

Attempts to recover a corrupted session file:
- Validates JSON lines
- Removes corrupted lines
- Creates backup before recovery

Safety Features

• Never clears locks for processes that are still alive (unless --force)
• Creates backups before modifying session files
• Logs all actions for audit trail
• Validates session file integrity after healing

Example Output

text

$ neckr0ik-session-healer check

Checking for locked sessions...
Found 3 lock files:

  ✗ session: c4fa26e6-20be-4843-9678-a2f328dd1844
    Lock: /Users/user/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/.../c4fa...jsonl.lock
    PID: 52251 (DEAD - process not running)
    Age: 2 hours 34 minutes
    Status: STALE - safe to clear

  ✓ session: a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab
    Lock: /Users/user/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/.../a1b2...jsonl.lock
    PID: 12345 (ALIVE)
    Age: 5 minutes
    Status: ACTIVE - do not clear

$ neckr0ik-session-healer heal

Healing stale locks...
[CLEARED] c4fa26e6-20be-4843-9678-a2f328dd1844 (PID 52251 was dead)
[SKIPPED] a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab (PID 12345 still alive)

Healed 1 session. 0 errors.

See Also

• scripts/healer.py - Main healer script
• references/lock-recovery.md - Detailed recovery guide