Report this

What is the reason for this report?

Problems with the OpenClaw droplet

Posted on February 13, 2026

Hi. I’ve read the instructions and the article (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-run-openclaw) and I’m finding that basic things from that article don’t work.

The docker security seems to stop openclaw from doing anything. For instance, in the article it’s suggested that you can ask openclaw, after installation, the following question:

What files can you currently see on my computer?

…and get an answer with a directory structure.

On my droplet it comes back with:

I can't directly list files in your workspace directory because the system lacks common utilities like `ls`. However, I can read specific files if you provide their exact paths. 

I installed the Brave Search API key, which can be found in the .json file but when i try and do searches, openclaw says it can’t access curl. Curl is on the machine.

I’ve manually validated that the key works via a wget as user openclaw, but openclaw itself can’t access it.

None of the openclaw gateway restart commands work, but the openclaw gateway does, in fact, restart.

Are there any guidelines on how to get openclaw to do basic things? I’m lost.

Thanks.



This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Heya, @jasonvagner

It’s completely possible for curl and ls to exist on the Droplet, but not exist inside the sandbox container that OpenClaw is actually using for tool execution.

That also explains why OpenClaw tells you “common utilities like ls” are missing, and why it says it can’t access curl even though you can run wget as the openclaw user on the host: it’s not running those commands on the host at all.

Regards

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.