π spawn EBADF β Root Cause & Fix (macOS)
Problem: Every exec tool call fails with spawn EBADF (errno: -9). The agent can't run any shell commands.
Environment: macOS Sequoia, Apple Silicon, Node.js v22
Root Cause: OpenClaw's file watcher monitors the entire workspace directory tree. If your skills/ folders contain Python .venv directories (thousands of files each), the number of open file descriptors exceeds the OS limit. Node.js then fails to open new fds for childprocess.spawn() β EBADF.
Fix: Move .venv directories out of the workspace:
'echo "$1: $(find "$1" | wc -l) files"' {} ;
skill=$(basename $(dirname "$venv"))
mv "$venv" /tmp/venv-backup-$skill
done
Things that DON'T help: Rebooting, reinstalling OpenClaw, switching Node versions, ulimit -n.
Suggestion: Adding .venv, node_modules, pycache to the default fs-watch ignore list would prevent this. These dirs can have 10k+ files and are never relevant for the agent.
Environment: macOS Sequoia, Apple Silicon, Node.js v22
Root Cause: OpenClaw's file watcher monitors the entire workspace directory tree. If your skills/ folders contain Python .venv directories (thousands of files each), the number of open file descriptors exceeds the OS limit. Node.js then fails to open new fds for childprocess.spawn() β EBADF.
Fix: Move .venv directories out of the workspace:
See how many files are hiding in venvs
find ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills -name ".venv" -exec sh -c \'echo "$1: $(find "$1" | wc -l) files"' {} ;
Move them out
for venv in ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/*/.venv; doskill=$(basename $(dirname "$venv"))
mv "$venv" /tmp/venv-backup-$skill
done
Things that DON'T help: Rebooting, reinstalling OpenClaw, switching Node versions, ulimit -n.
Suggestion: Adding .venv, node_modules, pycache to the default fs-watch ignore list would prevent this. These dirs can have 10k+ files and are never relevant for the agent.
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