Bug

When logging.file is set to a tilde-prefixed path (e.g. ~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log) in openclaw.json, the gateway crashes on startup with:

Gateway failed to start: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir '~/.openclaw/logs'

The gateway's resolveSettings() in src/logging/logger.ts reads logging.file from config via readLoggingConfig(), which bypasses the normalizeConfigPaths() pipeline. The raw tilde path is passed directly to fs.mkdirSync() at line 101, which doesn't expand ~.

Repro

openclaw config set logging.file '"~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log"' --json
openclaw gateway run
# → crashes immediately with ENOENT

Root Cause

resolveSettings() uses the raw config value without tilde expansion:

const file = cfg?.file ?? defaultRollingPathForToday();

Then buildLogger() passes it directly to:

fs.mkdirSync(path.dirname(settings.file), { recursive: true });

Node.js fs APIs don't expand ~, so it tries to create a literal ~/.openclaw/logs directory.

Fix

Call expandHomePrefix() on the file path in resolveSettings():

import { expandHomePrefix } from "../infra/home-dir.js";
// ...
const rawFile = cfg?.file ?? defaultRollingPathForToday();
const file = expandHomePrefix(rawFile);

This aligns with how other config paths are normalized via normalizeConfigPaths().

Impact

• Gateway fails to start and cannot self-recover (launchd keeps retrying and failing)
• Can be triggered by the embedded agent running openclaw config set logging.file "~/.openclaw/logs/..."
• Observed in production: agent modified config → gateway hot-reloaded → crashed → launchd restart loop

🤖 Generated with Claude Code