OpenClaw on PMSS

A Pulsed Media seedbox on a current PMSS can run OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent you talk to through a web page or a chat app, inside your own account. Turning it on is one button, Configure → Apps → OpenClaw → Turn on, and Open then lands you in the chat on your AI credits with no token to copy. On a new account it took 0.86 GB of disk, 52,535 files and 0.9 to 1.2 GB of RAM while idle, and 1.5 to 2 GB once it had answered requests; the installer wants room for 60,000 more files, which needs about 126 GiB of disk quota on an otherwise empty account. Requirements has the measurements.

OpenClaw is optional and runs commands as your account, so treat access to it like your SSH password. This page covers what is specific to Pulsed Media; for OpenClaw itself (agents, chat channels, plugins) see the OpenClaw documentation.

Requirements

Measured on a new seedbox account on 21 October 2026, with OpenClaw 2026.10.5 installed and its gateway running but not working on a task:

What	Measured
Files added	52,535
Disk quota used	0.86 GB: the program 618 MB, Node.js 207 MB, settings and memory 39 MB
Install time	106 seconds
RAM, idle	0.87 GB a few minutes after start, 1.0 GB fifteen minutes in, for OpenClaw's four processes
RAM, highest in those 15 minutes	1.42 GB for the whole account while the gateway started, rTorrent included
CPU, idle	about 2% of one core
Disk writes, idle	about 6 KB a second

The same day, on a second new account, OpenClaw answered 26 requests over ten minutes, sent through its command-line client, most of them running a shell command in the account. A stand-in model running inside the account answered instantly, so no AI credits were used and the model's own time is not included:

What	Measured
RAM after a fresh restart, before any request	1.16 GB for OpenClaw's five processes (the first account ran four), a few minutes after start
RAM during the requests	1.89 GB on average, 1.96 GB at most, for OpenClaw's processes; 2.17 GB at most for every process in the account
RAM in the five minutes after the last request	1.83 to 1.96 GB; after a single request it settled at about 1.5 GB
CPU during the requests	about 27% of one core on average, 1.2 cores at most over a 15-second stretch; most of it was the command-line client starting for each request
Disk writes during the requests	about 100 KB a second

The figures for OpenClaw's processes and for every process in the account count shared memory once, split between the processes that share it. The 1.42 GB figure is your account's memory counter, which your RAM allowance is measured against; on the second account that counter, page cache aside, reached 2.05 GB during the requests. Left idle for six hours on a fresh install (21 October 2026), OpenClaw's processes stayed between 0.97 and 1.17 GB with no steady growth, used 1.1% of one processor core on average and wrote about 97 MB; memory over days of real use was not measured.

Seedbox accounts have a file-count quota as well as a disk quota, and for OpenClaw the file count is the limit that usually decides. Check both with:

quota -s

Before it downloads anything, the installer checks that 60,000 more files fit under your file quota, a margin above the 52,535 it actually adds; if not, it stops and says so. PMSS sets the file quota at 500 files per GiB of disk quota, with a minimum of 15,000, so an otherwise empty account passes the check from about 126 GiB of disk quota up. The installer does not check disk space, so read that line of quota -s yourself.

The RAM counts against your account's allowance, next to rTorrent and anything else you run. With 1 GB of RAM the idle gateway alone takes nearly all of it; with 2 GB the account had about 0.6 GB to spare at its highest in the first 15 minutes, but once OpenClaw had answered requests its processes stayed at 1.5 to 1.96 GB, and every process in the test account together reached 2.17 GB. That is more than a 2 GB plan's RAM figure; on such a plan PMSS sets the account's hard memory ceiling at about 2.5 GB. userShowLimits shows your allowance and current use (how to read it); Seedbox and Storage Box Resource Tiers lists the allowance per plan.

Turning it on from the panel

Configure → Apps. OpenClaw sits under "Optional apps", here already running.

In the panel, open Configure and then Apps. OpenClaw is listed under Optional apps. The row appears once your server runs the PMSS update that adds it, and PMSS updates reach servers gradually. If the row is missing, try the SSH install below: some servers have the installer before they get the panel row. If that answers command not found or "No PMSS-reserved port yet", your server needs a newer PMSS; contact support if you need it sooner.

Click Turn on, or Start on the OpenClaw tile on the Welcome tab. There is no confirmation step: OpenClaw is an AI agent that runs commands as your account and uses your Pulsed Media AI credits by default, and the click runs the same installer as the SSH route. The first install took about two minutes in testing; on a busy server allow up to three. The row shows Starting… meanwhile and switches to Running when the gateway is up. Show log prints the end of the install and gateway logs, the first place to look if it stops.

The row while the first install runs.

Installing restarts your account's own web server once, so the panel and other web interfaces of your account may not answer for a few seconds. Torrent clients keep running, and your data, the media stack and the AI coding tools are left as they are.

The row then offers:

Button	What it does
Open	Opens the OpenClaw web interface in a new browser tab, already signed in (see below)
Restart	Stops and starts the gateway
Turn off	Stops the gateway and keeps it stopped, including after a server reboot. The installation, settings and workspace stay; Turn on starts it again without reinstalling
Show log	The end of the install log and of `~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log`

The buttons follow the row's state. Turn on appears only when OpenClaw is off. If the gateway stopped by itself the row offers Start; if the watchdog gave up after repeated failed starts it offers Restart.

The OpenClaw row once the gateway runs.

Once OpenClaw is installed, an OpenClaw tab appears in the panel's top bar and leads to the same Apps page. If you stopped rTorrent with Stop, the OpenClaw tab moves up to right after Welcome and the ruTorrent tab is hidden.

The panel has no uninstall button; remove OpenClaw over SSH with install-openclaw uninstall (see Running it over SSH).

Opening OpenClaw in your browser

The OpenClaw tab, with its own icon, in the top bar of a test account.

Open takes you to https://SERVER.pulsedmedia.com/user-USERNAME/openclaw/ in a new tab. That address sits behind your normal panel login, the same one as ruTorrent and the file manager; if you reached the panel through another hostname, the browser may ask for that login once more. The panel asks OpenClaw for a sign-in link that works once, so in testing the browser landed in the chat without a token prompt or a device-pairing step. OpenClaw refuses to be shown inside another page, which is why it opens in its own tab.

To come back later, click Open again; each click makes a fresh sign-in link.

The OpenClaw web interface after Open, set to the `default` model on AI credits.

On AI credits the model shown is default (Custom Provider), which is the Pulsed Media credit service. A short first message checks that credits work. Some small requests for avatars and icons can fail with error 401 in the browser's developer tools; that is cosmetic and chat still works.

A short test message answered on AI credits.

AI credits or your own provider

If ~/.virsilipasKey holds your key and is readable only by you (chmod 600 ~/.virsilipasKey; any group or other permission makes OpenClaw ignore it), a first install sets OpenClaw up on your AI credits with the model default; this is how to add the key file. OpenClaw then reads the key from that file each time it starts and keeps no copy in its own configuration. If you install before the key file exists and have not picked a model yourself, the watchdog switches OpenClaw to credits within about a minute of the file appearing. An OpenClaw setup you already have in ~/.openclaw keeps its settings when you install again; if it already uses a model of your own, it is never switched to credits.

To use a model provider of your own instead, run OpenClaw's interactive setup over SSH:

openclaw configure --section model

Provider and channel settings are OpenClaw's own; the OpenClaw documentation covers them.

A first task, start to finish

This walk-through was run on a new Pulsed Media seedbox account on 20 October 2026, with a few test files under ~/data. From the first click to an answered question took under four minutes, most of it the first install.

Turn it on. Configure → Apps → OpenClaw → Turn on. The row showed Starting… for about two and a half minutes and then Running.
Open it. Open lands in the chat of the agent called main, signed in, with the model set to default (Custom Provider), your AI credits.
Ask for something real. The question was "How much disk space am I using in my home directory, and which folders under ~/data are the biggest? Give me a short table." OpenClaw ran the measuring commands itself, in your account, and answered in 23 seconds with a table of the five folders and the total. That cost 8,386 credits, under one cent. Click the grey line above the answer (here "Measure home dir and ~/data folder sizes") to see which commands it ran.
Make it a habit. A follow-up in the same chat: "Good. Check this every Monday at 09:00 Helsinki time and tell me in this chat if my home directory goes over 150 GB. Set it up as an automation." OpenClaw checked that no similar job existed, created one and summarised it: every Monday at 09:00 Europe/Helsinki, quiet while usage stays under the limit, and a list of the five biggest folders in ~/data if it goes over. This took 2 minutes 15 seconds; its activity list shows two attempts that failed along the way, which it retried by itself. Its delivery setting was not checked: a reminder set the same way ran on time but did not appear in the chat, so check the job under Automations. To change the time or the limit, or to cancel the job, ask in the same chat.
Check what it set up. Automations in the left sidebar lists the job with its schedule and next run, next to two jobs OpenClaw has built in: the 30-minute heartbeat and a nightly memory job.

The first real task: disk use per folder, measured in the account and answered as a table.

The follow-up turned into a weekly automation.

Automations: the new weekly check, a daily brief from a later test, and the two built-in jobs.

OpenClaw works on what your account can reach and nothing more: your own files and processes, with your own permissions. It has no root access, so it cannot restart server services, and other customers' home folders are closed to your account. It can delete or move your own files, so say "do not change anything" when you only want a report. More tasks run the same way, from a media library index to a morning brief and a torrent added by request, are on OpenClaw Use Cases on PMSS, with the time and credits each took and what a month of use costs.

Installing over SSH

Log in over SSH (see Seedbox access via FTP, SSH and SFTP) and run:

install-openclaw install
install-openclaw status

The installer asks for confirmation; --yes skips the question. It does not set up a chat channel. On a server with the panel row, an SSH install also makes Open and the tab work. An installation made before the panel row existed gets browser access by running install-openclaw install --yes once more; your settings stay.

Connecting through an SSH tunnel

Without the panel's Open, reach the gateway through an SSH tunnel from your computer, using the port number from ~/.openclaw/gateway.port:

ssh -L 18789:127.0.0.1:PORT username@server.pulsedmedia.com

Then open http://127.0.0.1:18789/user-USERNAME/openclaw/ in your browser, with your own username. An installation that has never had browser access set up answers at http://127.0.0.1:18789/ instead. The local number (18789 here) can be any free port on your computer. The page asks for the gateway token: paste it into Gateway secret and click Connect. This prints it:

install-openclaw status --show-token

The page also suggests OpenClaw's own token commands. On PMSS the installer creates and stores the token, so read it with install-openclaw status --show-token instead.

Running it over SSH

Command	What it does
`install-openclaw status`	Shows whether the gateway runs, its port, whether it is listening, and the Node and OpenClaw versions
`install-openclaw start`	Starts the gateway and resets the watchdog
`install-openclaw stop`	Stops the gateway (the same as Turn off)
`install-openclaw uninstall`	Removes the program files, the wrapper, the crontab lines and the web server rule; keeps `~/.openclaw`
`install-openclaw uninstall --purge`	Also deletes `~/.openclaw`, including the token, credentials and workspace

The crontab watchdog starts the gateway after a server reboot and checks it once a minute. After five failed starts in a row it stops trying until you run install-openclaw start or click Restart in the panel, so a broken configuration does not restart forever.

Updating OpenClaw

The installer installs the newest OpenClaw release from npm at the time you turn it on, unchanged from upstream; OpenClaw's own automatic updates are off by default upstream. install-openclaw status shows the version you run. Do not run openclaw update on a seedbox. In a test on a Pulsed Media server on 21 October 2026 it failed its own checks twice and kept the old version running, but each attempt left a copy of the program behind in a folder named openclaw-update-runtime-… under ~/.local/share/openclaw/lib. The running gateway did not use those folders; once OpenClaw itself was later replaced they held about 49,000 files and 620 MB, which put the 200 GiB test account over its file quota. install-openclaw update, below, removes them; on a server without it, delete the folders whose names start with openclaw-update-runtime- in that directory and nothing else.

install-openclaw update updates OpenClaw to the current npm release without leaving those folders behind. PMSS added it on 21 October 2026; to see whether your server has it, run install-openclaw with no arguments and look for update in the list it prints. The command stops OpenClaw, removes any openclaw-update-runtime-… folders, installs the current release, runs OpenClaw's own repair step and starts it again, even if you had stopped it. On a test account on a Pulsed Media server on 21 October 2026 it took 89 to 102 seconds, once on the same version and once with a test copy pointed at OpenClaw's beta channel, moving to a newer release. OpenClaw is stopped while the new release installs and the repair step runs.

While the new release installs beside the old one, the account briefly holds about 50,000 extra files. quota -s prints two file numbers after your file count: the quota, which an account may pass for a grace period (7 days on the server tested), and the limit, which it cannot pass. When the quota can be read, the command runs only when your file count is not over the quota and is at least 60,000 below the limit. PMSS sets the limit 1.25 times the quota, 625 files per GiB of disk quota, and an otherwise empty account with OpenClaw installed holds about 55,400 files, so it meets that on a plan of about 185 GiB or more; on a smaller plan OpenClaw runs, but update refuses until you free some files.

After install-openclaw update or install-openclaw install --yes has run once, openclaw update refuses to run and says to use the external supervisor's update, which on a seedbox is install-openclaw update. Commands such as ~/bin/openclaw health and ~/bin/openclaw gateway restart work from then on. If update is not in the list, contact support for a newer release.

What gets installed

Item	Where
`install-openclaw` (the installer and watchdog)	`~/bin`, on your PATH, shipped by PMSS updates
Node.js (24.21.0 as of October 2026), downloaded from nodejs.org and checked against a SHA256 pinned in the installer	`~/.local/share/node-openclaw`
OpenClaw	`~/.local/share/openclaw`
`openclaw` command	`~/bin/openclaw`
Configuration, gateway token, logs, workspace	`~/.openclaw`
Two watchdog lines in your own crontab, both ending in `# pmss-openclaw`	`crontab -l`
A web server rule that publishes `/user-USERNAME/openclaw/` behind your panel login	`~/.lighttpd/custom.d/`

The gateway itself listens on 127.0.0.1 only, on a port PMSS reserves for your account. The port number is in ~/.openclaw/gateway.port.

OpenClaw or the AI coding tools?

For coding and one-off jobs in a shell, use the AI coding tools that ship with PMSS. They are installed system-wide and cost none of your quota. OpenClaw is the choice when you want an agent that keeps running between sessions and that you reach from a browser or a chat app instead of a terminal.

Using Pikkumies from OpenClaw

With Pikkumies in the same account, OpenClaw can run Pikkumies' seedbox tools for torrents, the *arr apps, media servers, storage, backups and containers, and the tool runs themselves use no AI credits. Pikkumies adds a skill named pikkumies to OpenClaw, ~/.openclaw/skills/pikkumies/SKILL.md (or the same path under OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR), each time it installs, updates or starts, and rewrites it only when its content changes. If you install OpenClaw after Pikkumies, the skill arrives with Pikkumies' next start or daily update.

You ask OpenClaw for	What the skill has it do	AI credits for that step
A seedbox check or fix	Find the tool in Pikkumies' tool index and run it as a plain command	None
Something that needs Pikkumies' own judgment or memory	Ask Pikkumies once and take its one answer	One Pikkumies run on your credits; the first one on a new account can take a few minutes to set up
A support ticket to Pulsed Media	Look in the Pulsed Media knowledge base and wiki first, save a draft, show it to you, and send it only after your yes in a later message; the ticket says it was opened through OpenClaw at your request	None
A scheduled check	An OpenClaw cron job that runs the tool as a command, without a model	None

OpenClaw's own replies cost what they always cost; the right-hand column is what each step adds. The skill puts 325 bytes into each request OpenClaw sends to its model, under 1% of the roughly 48,000 bytes of instructions OpenClaw already sends, measured on 21 October 2026; Pikkumies' other skills stay out of OpenClaw. In the same test, a scheduled check set up this way ran Pikkumies' status tool, finished with status ok and made no model request, and a ticket draft it saved stayed unsent.

Before a change, the skill has OpenClaw say what it will do, and before a delete or a send it waits for your yes. That rule is an instruction OpenClaw follows, not a lock: Pikkumies' own safety checks run only inside Pikkumies, and whatever OpenClaw runs, runs as your account (Using it safely). The skill also tells OpenClaw never to read Pikkumies' key files.

To turn the skill off:

~/bin/openclaw config set skills.entries.pikkumies.enabled false

Deleting the file lasts only until Pikkumies' next start. A skill of your own named pikkumies, one without the line Pikkumies marks its file with, is left alone.

The two together take about 118,000 files: 52,535 for OpenClaw and about 65,300 for Pikkumies, measured on new accounts. OpenClaw's installer also wants room for 60,000 more files than the account holds, so with Pikkumies installed first an otherwise empty account needs about 128,000 files of file quota, which comes with about 256 GiB of disk quota.

Your keys and your data

PMSS supplies no key for an outside model provider. OpenClaw runs on your AI credits or on the provider and key you configure. Your prompts, plus whatever the agent reads while answering, go to the model that answers them: on credits through the Pulsed Media credit service, which never stores or logs their text and sends them on under Pulsed Media's account, so the provider does not learn who you are (why credits go through Pulsed Media), otherwise to your provider under its terms. Do not paste a key into a command line that ends up in your shell history; openclaw configure asks for it instead. The gateway token file is created readable by your account only.

Using it safely

Your panel password now opens OpenClaw too. The browser address sits behind your panel login, and OpenClaw can run commands as your account, so anyone with your panel password can drive it. Use a strong password and do not share it.
The token equals shell access. Anyone holding the gateway token can make the agent run commands as your account. Show it only with status --show-token and keep it out of screenshots and chats.
Loopback is not private on a shared server. Other accounts on the same server can connect to 127.0.0.1 too. The token is what keeps them out, which is why the installer refuses to start the gateway without one.
Keep the gateway on loopback. Do not change its bind address or publish its port. Use Open or the SSH tunnel.
A chat channel extends the same access. If you connect OpenClaw to a chat app, everyone who can message the bot can drive your account. Restrict the bot to your own identity before you enable it.

Troubleshooting

There is no OpenClaw row under Configure → Apps: Your server does not have the PMSS update that adds it yet. Try the SSH install; if that fails too, contact support if you need the update sooner.
install-openclaw: command not found: The server has not yet received the PMSS update that ships the installer. Contact support if you need it sooner.
"No PMSS-reserved port yet": Same cause: the port is reserved by a full PMSS update.
Turn on shows "Action failed. Please try again.": The panel shows this generic text when the server's answer carries no message of its own. A common cause is the version mismatch described under the "unavailable" message below, right after a server update: reload the page later. If it keeps happening, run the SSH install; its messages name the cause.
"OpenClaw is unavailable; reload after the server update.": For a while after a server update, the panel files and the server can be on different PMSS versions. Reload the page later; the panel refuses to act rather than run the wrong installer.
"OpenClaw could not open. Start it in Configure and check its log.": The gateway is not running or not ready. Click the row's Turn on, Start or Restart button, wait for Running, and read Show log if it does not get there.
The install stops because of the file quota: The account cannot take 60,000 more files. Free up files (quota -s shows the count) or move to a plan with a larger disk quota, which also raises the file limit.
"Gateway did not stay running" or "Gateway is still starting": The first start can take a minute or two on a busy server. Wait two minutes and check again. If it still shows stopped, the reason is in ~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log (Show log in the panel).
The watchdog gave up: Read the gateway log, fix the cause, then click Restart or run install-openclaw start.

Where OpenClaw fits

Pulsed Media seedboxes include SSH access and per-account installers like this one, so tools such as OpenClaw run inside your own account without root. On an otherwise empty account OpenClaw needs about 126 GiB of disk quota to install and about 185 GiB to update in place, and a plan with 2 GB of RAM or more (memory use is measured under Requirements): compare the plan tiers or see the seedbox plans.