Checkpoint: Systemd PATH Fix + Heartbeat Consolidation

Date: 2026-04-06 Session: Main (Telegram)

Context

Michael asked about whether OpenClaw could see inside the openclaw.json gateway config. This led to a broader discussion about heartbeat vs cron for multi-task intelligence gathering (email triage, weather, calendar, news, blog alerts, step/health monitoring).

Key Decisions Made

1. Heartbeat Consolidation (✅ Done)

Old approach: 9 separate cron jobs, 6 delivering to Telegram throughout the day.

New approach: 1 consolidated heartbeat every 45 min, 6am–9pm Sydney, with internal checks for:

Home monitor (motion/camera changes)
Email inbox scan (personal emails only)
Weather — Narooma (always report first beat of day; rain ≥10% or gusts ≥30 km/h triggers alert)
Blog RSS scan (new articles)
Real estate morning report (6am only)

CRUD operations:

Narooma Weather Day Update cron → disabled
All other crons → left intact (Michael disabled them himself)
HEARTBEAT.md → updated with new weather logic

2. Heartbeat Config Change in openclaw.json (✅ Done)

Before:

Every: 30m
Active hours: 9:00 AM – 10:00 PM

After:

Every: 45m
Active hours: 6:00 AM – 9:00 PM

Applied via: direct JSON edit to /home/openclaw/.openclaw/openclaw.json → required manual sudo systemctl restart openclaw (Michael ran this)

3. OpenClaw CLI Not in PATH — Root Cause Identified

Problem: OpenClaw CLI (openclaw) lives at /home/openclaw/.npm-global/bin/openclaw but this directory was missing from the PATH in exec sessions, even though Michael's interactive shell has it set via ~/.bashrc.

Root cause: systemd services don't source ~/.bashrc. The User=openclaw directive in the systemd unit doesn't trigger a login shell — it just runs the binary directly with a minimal environment.

Solution (proposed, pending Michael's action): Add a drop-in systemd override at:

/etc/systemd/system/openclaw.service.d/path.conf

With content:

[Service]
Environment="PATH=/home/openclaw/.npm-global/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin"

Then reload: sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart openclaw

Michael also plans to add additional PATHs to this drop-in as needed.

Pending Actions

Action	Owner	Status
Create systemd drop-in with PATH fix	Michael	Pending
Restart openclaw gateway after drop-in	Michael	Pending
Confirm `openclaw` CLI is reachable	Soren	Will verify once done

Notes

All heartbeat checks use bestEffort: false except weather which uses bestEffort: true
Real estate DB scrape cron (5139e9b1) runs independently at 6am — no delivery, just DB update
Security audit cron (healthcheck:security-audit) remains untouched — weekly Sunday 3am
Michael confirmed he built the OpenClaw system himself (not auto-installed by a package manager)
OpenClaw version: 2026.4.2

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