PM2 Gateway Restart

Use PM2 to reliably restart OpenClaw gateway on Windows. Use when the user wants to restart the OpenClaw gateway, fix port conflicts, or recover from a crashed gateway. This skill handles the Windows-specific issues with FIN_WAIT_2 TCP connections and scheduled task failures that plague the standard openclaw gateway start/stop commands.

This skill provides reliable gateway restart using PM2 process manager instead of the built-in openclaw gateway commands.

Why PM2?

The standard openclaw gateway start/stop commands on Windows suffer from:

• FIN_WAIT_2 TCP connection timeouts (~60 seconds)
• Scheduled task race conditions
• Inconsistent startup state reporting

PM2 handles process resurrection and provides reliable restarts.

Commands

Quick Restart (Production)

powershell

pm2 restart openclaw-gateway

Wait ~15 seconds for the gateway to fully initialize, then verify with:

powershell

curl http://127.0.0.1:18789/

Full Cycle Restart (When Issues Persist)

powershell

pm2 restart openclaw-gateway; sleep 3; pm2 restart openclaw-gateway

Check Status

powershell

pm2 status
pm2 logs openclaw-gateway --lines 50

Start Gateway (If Not Running)

powershell

pm2 start "D:/Program Files/nodejs/node.exe" --name "openclaw-gateway" -- "C:/Users/Administrator/AppData/Roaming/npm/node_modules/openclaw/dist/index.js" gateway --port 18789

Troubleshooting

Port Still in Use After Restart

Wait 65 seconds for Windows TCP timeout to clear FIN_WAIT_2 connections, then:

powershell

pm2 restart openclaw-gateway

RPC Probe Fails But Gateway Listening

The RPC check may fail briefly during startup. Wait 15 seconds and retry:

powershell

curl http://127.0.0.1:18789/

PM2 Process Not Found

Reinstall the gateway process:

powershell

pm2 start "D:/Program Files/nodejs/node.exe" --name "openclaw-gateway" -- "C:/Users/Administrator/AppData/Roaming/npm/node_modules/openclaw/dist/index.js" gateway --port 18789
pm2 save

Setup (One Time)

powershell

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start "D:/Program Files/nodejs/node.exe" --name "openclaw-gateway" -- "C:/Users/Administrator/AppData/Roaming/npm/node_modules/openclaw/dist/index.js" gateway --port 18789
pm2 save