Hey,

Spent a few hours today trying to set up a Windows PC as a node host and ran into a wall with the approval system.

Setup:

• Gateway running on Ubuntu (minipc)
• Node host on Windows 11 (tried both native PowerShell and WSL2)
• OpenClaw 2026.2.17 on both sides
• Node connects fine, shows as paired + connected
• system.run listed in capabilities

The problem:
Every system.run command fails with approval timed out after 2 minutes. The approval socket just never responds.

What I tried:

1. Added commands to allowlist via openclaw approvals allowlist add --node "..." "*"
2. Edited ~/.openclaw/exec-approvals.json directly with "defaults": { "*": { "allow": true } }
3. Ran node as Administrator on Windows
4. Tried WSL2 instead of native Windows
5. Restarted the node after each change

None of it made any difference. The allowlist shows up correctly when I check the file, but the approval request still times out.

Logs show:

gateway/ws res ✗ node.invoke errorCode=UNAVAILABLE errorMessage=SYSTEM_RUN_DENIED: approval required

Is the approval socket supposed to be running as a separate process? Or is there some config I'm missing?

Running Ubuntu gateway + Windows/WSL node if that matters.

Thanks!