High CPU/RAM and Gateway Restarts in OpenClaw? Disable IPv6 for Telegram

If your OpenClaw instance has been experiencing high CPU/RAM usage, sluggish responses, and periodic gateway restarts in recent versions (especially with Telegram integration), the culprit may be autoSelectFamily: true (default on Node 22+). A user on r/openclaw traced the issue to failed IPv6 connections causing resource leaks.

The Problem

OpenClaw's Telegram integration on Node 22+ defaults to autoSelectFamily: true, which attempts both IPv4 and IPv6 connections simultaneously. If your network stack isn't IPv6-capable, those connections fail with ENETUNREACH, cascading into event loop stalls. Symptoms include:

• 80-second event loop freezes
• CPU pinned at ~52%
• ~9 gateway restarts per day
• sendChatAction failures

The Fix

Set both autoSelectFamily: false (forces IPv4-only connections) and dnsResultOrder: 'ipv4first' as a belt-and-suspenders approach in your Telegram bot configuration. Example config snippet:

// In your OpenClaw Telegram bot setup
clientOptions: {
  autoSelectFamily: false,
  dnsResultOrder: 'ipv4first'
}

Results

After applying the fix, the user reported:

• 0 liveness warnings
• 0 ERROR-level log entries
• 0 restarts over 5+ hours
• 0 sendChatAction failures
• CPU dropped from 52% to 4.4%
• No event loop freezes

If you run multiple Telegram bots, the issue may be more pronounced. This fix is applicable to any OpenClaw version using Node 22+ with Telegram.