Recover and Rebuild Sandboxes
Use the lightest recovery operation that repairs the sandbox while preserving its supported state.
Upgrade from a Release That Used Shields
Shields has been retired from NemoClaw. The current CLI has no Shields commands, status, timers, or supported locked posture. After an upgrade, NemoClaw prints a retirement notice while it still finds legacy Shields state and identifies the affected sandbox records when possible.
If the sandbox has only an inert legacy state record, create an independent trusted backup. Then rebuild the affected sandbox before running further mutations.
If NemoClaw blocks an operation because it found an old timer, transition, policy snapshot, authority-bearing runtime-provider recovery artifact, or ambiguous recovery state, do not onboard or mutate any sandbox yet. These files can represent detached mutation authority that the current CLI deliberately does not interpret. A different requested sandbox name does not make onboarding safe.
A notice-only provider intent recorded before mutation authority was granted is preserved for review but does not by itself block lifecycle operations. The retirement notice prints each exact absolute notice-only path and labels it nonblocking. A notice-only path is not part of the quarantine inventory unless a later blocking error explicitly lists that same path.
Use the active state directory and exact blocking paths printed in the error as the complete quarantine inventory. A provider path can name a whole lifecycle transaction directory; treat the whole printed path as one unit.
- Record the active state directory and every printed blocking path.
- Reboot the host. Before continuing, ensure that no older NemoClaw binary restarts. Stopping selected processes without a reboot is not sufficient authority-stop proof.
- Create trusted backup storage and a quarantine directory outside the printed active state directory. Back up each listed path, then move the original whole path into that outside quarantine. Do not delete, edit, or interpret any artifact, and do not move only selected files from a printed transaction directory.
- Confirm that none of the printed paths remains in the active state directory. Only then retry the current-version rebuild or recreate flow. For recreation, use the manual transfer workflow to copy only trusted user data.
If you cannot complete the reboot, backup, or full quarantine, leave every artifact untouched. NemoClaw continues to block ordinary mutations while any listed path remains in active state.
The current CLI does not expose cross-sandbox recovery-backup restore. It deliberately does not interpret, resume, or delete ambiguous legacy recovery state.
Restart a Stopped Sandbox
If NemoClaw reports that a standard sandbox is stopped, ask OpenShell to restart that exact sandbox:
This path preserves the sandbox workspace and leaves lifecycle ownership with OpenShell. start
and recover resolve a sandbox from the local registry that owns it, even when another local
OpenShell gateway is active. They reconcile a sandbox that OpenShell still reports as Stopped,
including when its provider container is already running. Neither command directly restarts or
unpauses the provider container. If the container is paused, follow the printed provider guidance
instead.
Before destructive replacement, run nemoclaw <sandbox-name> status. If the owning gateway
reports the registered sandbox missing, NemoClaw leaves any provider container and registry entry
untouched. Retry after the gateway reconnects. If the sandbox was intentionally deleted, preserve
any separate backup and use nemoclaw <sandbox-name> destroy --yes to retire the stale entry
when the command can prove the OpenShell resource absent. Then onboard a clean replacement and use
the manual transfer workflow to copy only reviewed,
credential-free user data from an independently maintained backup. Rebuild cannot recover a
workspace or live OpenShell policy that no longer exists.
The start command repairs the agent runtime and host-side port forwards.
It returns success only after it authenticates the recovered agent runtime, OpenShell reports the sandbox ready, and host-side port forwards pass their checks.
If a check fails, the command exits nonzero, identifies the failure, and prints recovery guidance before you retry start.
Recover the Agent Runtime
recover can start an existing stopped standard sandbox before it repairs the
agent runtime. It submits that lifecycle mutation through OpenShell and waits
for OpenShell to advance the sandbox out of the Stopped phase. If OpenShell
cannot start the sandbox, recovery reports the failure; it does not fall back
to direct provider-container lifecycle actions.
If nemoclaw <name> status reports Phase: Stopped after an intentional stop, run nemoclaw <name> start.
If status reports sandbox_container_stopped or an unhealthy gateway, run the recover command instead of opening a shell. For a missing sandbox, follow the replacement procedure under Restart a Stopped Sandbox.
The command verifies the native gateway and re-establishes the dashboard port forward.
If the gateway is stopped, recover reports it and does not relaunch it.
Run gateway restart to request a native restart.
If the host forward is already active, recovery accepts it only after OpenShell ownership is reconciled and the local endpoint is reachable.
If a listener that NemoClaw cannot attribute to the sandbox’s OpenShell forward holds the port, recover reports it and leaves it running.
It then exits nonzero and does not restore the forward.
Legacy SSH forward records do not establish ownership.
Stop the owning OpenShell gateway or service to release the listener before retrying recovery.
Use gateway restart when you intentionally need a supported OpenClaw gateway to reload runtime configuration or plugins.
The restart command invokes OpenClaw’s native lifecycle command through the selected OpenShell sandbox.
NemoClaw requires /readyz to return HTTP 200 with JSON {"ready":true} before it checks or recovers host-side dashboard, messaging, and agent forwards.
Refer to nemoclaw <name> recover and nemoclaw <name> gateway restart for details.
Recovery repairs supported agent processes and host forwards inside the registered sandbox. When the
sandbox itself is stopped, start submits that lifecycle mutation to OpenShell; recovery does not
take independent ownership of the provider container. If the native supervisor remains absent after
bounded recovery, NemoClaw leaves the sandbox unchanged and directs you to rebuild or re-onboard.
For the lifecycle trust boundary and fail-closed conditions, refer to Understand Gateway Lifecycle Control. If recovery cannot verify a sandbox that needs current credentials or native lifecycle support, rebuild it.
Understand Launch Readiness Leases
A successful complete preflight for nemoclaw launch <sandbox-name> can publish a credential-free launch-readiness lease on Linux. Linux infrastructure can publish the same evidence with nemoclaw <sandbox-name> connect --probe-only. The lease has a fixed 24-hour lifetime that repeated launches do not extend. Leaving the agent with /exit does not revoke it, and users do not refresh it manually.
During the lease, launch still verifies the owning OpenShell gateway, exact live sandbox identity, registry and agent configuration, effective policy, inference route, required forwards, and semantic runtime health.
Every configured route must serve a valid response to a bounded request for the recorded model before NemoClaw accepts or publishes launch readiness.
Shared-route providers use inference.local.
Their models probe must return HTTP 2xx, except that a retained legacy openrouter-api shared route can return HTTP 404 for GET /v1/models when the bounded model request succeeds.
NVIDIA Endpoints and supported fixed hosted selections verify their recorded sandbox-attached provider and run the bounded model request at its native endpoint without the shared-route models probe.
A failed required probe or model request rejects launch readiness.
This check is stricter than the HTTP 200–499 reachability diagnostic used by ordinary connect.
For OpenClaw, connect --probe-only settles the existing allowlisted pairing flow before it publishes a credential-free pairing qualification with the lease. The readiness evidence binds the OpenClaw version and trusted registry and agent manifest configuration. Its pairing qualification binds the canonical CLI client, exact paired device identity, required operator role and scopes, owning OpenShell gateway, sandbox lifecycle identity, and fixed lease epoch. Before lease acceptance, launch makes a bounded, read-only observation of the current OpenClaw-owned pairing state through the owning OpenShell gateway. It skips the complete pairing approval pass only when the qualification still matches exactly and no relevant allowlisted request is pending. Any missing, unreadable, malformed, ambiguous, or changed observation runs the complete pairing approval pass. A relevant allowlisted pending request also runs that complete path.
Hermes and LangChain Deep Agents Code retain their existing session setup on the lease-accepted path. When those checks pass, it can skip duplicate recovery, readiness polling, and inference-route repair. The lease is not a health guarantee or repair authority.
For missing, unsafe, malformed, expired, mismatched, changed, or unhealthy evidence, NemoClaw fences any prior acceptable evidence before it runs the complete preflight. Ordinary launch continues only when NemoClaw proves that no old authority or evidence can exist, or durably rotates the runtime epoch. If an old epoch might exist and cannot be durably rotated, launch and connect --probe-only stop before complete preflight or recovery. Their redacted guidance asks you to repair the current user’s secure OS runtime authority and NemoClaw state permissions, then retry. If NemoClaw securely proves that both the authority and receipt are absent but cannot create new authority, ordinary launch can run the complete preflight without optimization; on Linux, connect --probe-only exits nonzero because it could not publish evidence. If that preflight succeeds before the lease expires, replacement evidence keeps the original start and expiry time. After expiry, a successful complete preflight starts a new 24-hour lease only when publication succeeds.
Before the first mutation in the complete preflight, the producer revalidates its sandbox-global runtime epoch under the sandbox lifecycle lock followed by the owning gateway lock. It holds both locks through all mutations in the complete preflight, final state capture, and publication. A stale producer makes no changes and re-inspects the newer lease.
If unsafe or malformed authority history makes the prior lease timeline untrustworthy, NemoClaw durably invalidates the old epoch and starts one conservative 24-hour quarantine. Publication remains disabled until both wall time and monotonic uptime span the full quarantine. Repeated attempts do not extend it. After it elapses, the next successful complete preflight can publish a new fixed 24-hour lease.
Lease acceptance and publication are currently Linux-only and require a secure, independently writable OS per-user runtime authority under /run/user/<numeric-uid>. It never uses caller-provided environment variables to select this authority.
On macOS, launch runs the complete preflight every time and does not publish a launch-readiness lease. connect --probe-only also runs the complete preflight, including recovery and probes. After a successful probe and recovery, it prints a note that launch-readiness evidence is unavailable on this platform and exits zero. On Linux, unsafe launch-readiness diagnostics can report the affected path, owner UID, permissions, a bounded error code, and repair guidance.
They exclude receipt contents, environment values, and raw OS error messages.
Infrastructure must run connect --probe-only as the same final numeric user that later runs launch. Run it after the final durable home and state volume is mounted and after policy and network provisioning is complete. On completion, connect --probe-only writes one credential-free Probe timing: line with elapsed milliseconds for readiness, authority, lifecycle, gateway, processes, forward, inference, pairing, and publication stages. The line also reports the lifecycle and forward actions, the result, and the failed stage when the probe fails. Timing output is diagnostic only and does not change probe success or failure. NemoClaw rejects evidence after a bound sandbox, configuration, policy, or network identity changes. Deployment ordering remains responsible for external changes that OpenShell and NemoClaw cannot observe.
Refer to the probe timing reference for observation counts and readiness decisions.
Host OpenShell Gateway Versus In-Sandbox Agent Recovery
recover and start repair the in-sandbox agent gateway and the host-side port forwards for one named sandbox. connect --probe-only waits for that sandbox to become ready, rechecks it on its recorded gateway, and then verifies or repairs the same sandbox-scoped processes and forwards. These commands do not restart, replace, or reap the shared host OpenShell gateway process. If the host gateway RPC returns an error while these sandbox-scoped commands run, they surface the error with explicit next-step guidance and exit rather than swapping the shared gateway out from under other sandboxes.
The OpenShell CLI has no command that starts a gateway, and openshell status only reports the gateway state. If NemoClaw starts the gateway on your host, run nemoclaw onboard again to repair the host gateway itself. If a deployment outside NemoClaw owns the gateway process, start the gateway with that deployment, then run openshell gateway select <gateway>. NemoClaw prints the applicable recovery guidance when a sandbox-scoped command reports that the host gateway is down. Other workflows, including onboarding, rebuild, and doctor --fix, can explicitly recover the named host gateway when their operation requires it. nemoclaw <name> gateway restart instead restarts only the supported agent gateway inside the named sandbox.
Rebuild While Preserving State
If you changed the underlying Dockerfile, upgraded OpenClaw, or want to pick
up a new base image without losing your sandbox’s workspace files, use
rebuild instead of destroying and recreating.
On WSL with Docker Desktop, a generated replacement image build uses a temporary credential-free Docker configuration when the configured Docker Desktop credential helper is unavailable. NemoClaw removes the temporary configuration after the build and does not modify your Docker configuration. An explicit custom Dockerfile continues to use your configured Docker credentials because its base image or build steps might require a private registry. If that custom rebuild cannot reach the credential helper, restore the Docker Desktop session or credential-helper access before retrying.
Generated-image rebuilds use the base image selected during preflight, even when the source sandbox records an older base-image hint. Custom Dockerfile rebuilds use the recorded Dockerfile source.
A sandbox created with --from-image rebuilds from its recorded digest instead.
Before backup or deletion, NemoClaw makes that digest available in its selected Docker or rootless
Podman runtime and validates its platform, runtime metadata, tool disclosure mode, and immutable
local content identity.
If a pull or validation fails, rebuild keeps the existing sandbox and stops before replacement.
If replacement onboarding returns a nonzero status, rebuild stops before post-create state restoration and preserves the backup and registry recovery state. It does not report a successful rebuild.
When NemoClaw can identify the exact stopped Docker container and prove its immutable runtime authority, rebuild captures the complete native root through the Docker provider without starting or executing inside the source. This recovery path supports stopped OpenClaw and Deep Agents Code sandboxes.
When that provider-owned capture is not available, rebuild asks OpenShell to start the exact stopped sandbox for the duration of the pre-recreate state backup and asks OpenShell to return it to Stopped afterward, the same lifecycle path nemoclaw backup-all uses. If OpenShell cannot start the sandbox, or the retried backup still fails, rebuild aborts without recreating the sandbox; it reports an incomplete-backup notice only when a partial backup was retained. If the backup succeeds but OpenShell cannot return the sandbox to Stopped, rebuild also aborts and reports the failed transition. If neither path can establish stopped-source authority, repair the OpenShell lifecycle state or recover the data manually before retrying; NemoClaw does not fall back to a selective directory copy.
On OpenShell 0.0.116, start cannot restart a sandbox in Phase: Error.
If OpenShell still reports the sandbox in Phase: Error but its Docker-driver container is missing,
rebuild cannot back up its live workspace and stops before replacement. Recover the workspace from
an independently maintained backup before creating a clean replacement.
When the target manifest declares an agent version, NemoClaw runs a fresh live version probe after state restoration. It records the replacement version and reports success only when the observed version matches the rebuild target. An unavailable or different version ends the rebuild with a nonzero status instead of recording the target version as observed.
After post-restore writes, rebuild verifies that the final openclaw.json and .config-hash pair match.
When the selected provider is Other OpenAI-compatible endpoint, rebuild starts the restored OpenClaw configuration and verifies the selected inference route.
If either verification fails, NemoClaw exits nonzero, preserves the backup, and does not report a successful rebuild.
Correct the reported configuration or route error, then rerun nemoclaw <sandbox-name> rebuild --yes.
Resolve Rebuild Preflight Stops
Before it backs up or deletes the existing sandbox, rebuild validates the recorded sandbox, gateway, inference route, policy, MCP, agent, and operation-lock state. When one of these checks fails, NemoClaw prints Rebuild preflight failed, explains how to recover, and ends with Aborting rebuild. At this boundary, the existing sandbox is unchanged and no sandbox data has been removed.
For a remote inference provider other than Hermes Provider, preflight checks the selected credential’s non-secret expiration metadata from OpenShell.
For these providers, a provider that no longer exposes the recorded credential key, an expired credential, or expiration metadata that NemoClaw cannot verify stops rebuild before backup or deletion, including with --force.
A provider that exposes the recorded credential key without an expiration entry is treated as non-expiring. That credential or one with a future expiration continues through the remaining preflight checks.
Hermes Provider uses its separate authentication and credential-binding checks; this expiration-metadata guard does not apply to it.
For remote providers other than Hermes Provider and Amazon Bedrock, preflight validates a nonempty API key supplied through the host environment.
NemoClaw checks that key against the provider endpoint before replacement-image preparation or backup.
It validates the key again immediately before sandbox deletion.
When validation fails, rebuild stops without deleting the existing sandbox, including with --force.
A valid credential stored in OpenShell does not bypass validation of a supplied host key.
Use the recovery guidance that matches the reported check:
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Verify the sandbox name when its registry entry is missing.
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Follow the printed OpenShell gateway recovery steps when the gateway schema is incompatible.
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Correct the exported API key when rebuild reports
the host inference credential could not be validated. To reuse a credential already stored in OpenShell, unset its host environment variable instead. For NVIDIA Endpoints, this variable isNVIDIA_INFERENCE_API_KEY. Confirm that the provider endpoint is reachable. Then retryrebuild. -
Refresh the named OpenShell credential or rerun
nemoclaw onboardwhen rebuild reports an expired provider credential. -
Re-register the provider or rerun
nemoclaw onboardwith the correct credential when the provider no longer exposes the recorded credential key, then retryrebuild. -
Restore gateway connectivity and authentication when rebuild cannot verify the recorded provider.
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Restore access to the current OpenShell policy when rebuild reports that the live policy cannot be read, then rerun
rebuild. NemoClaw does not reconstruct policy from registry state. -
Replace literal policy credentials with supported OpenShell credential bindings or resolver placeholders when rebuild refuses the policy handoff. NemoClaw stops before it creates the handoff or changes sandbox resources.
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Resolve an incomplete MCP destroy transaction before retrying.
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Back up the sandbox state and recreate it with
nemoclaw onboardwhen the record contains multiple agents. Transactional multi-agent rebuild is not supported. -
Wait for another onboarding or rebuild operation to finish before retrying. If verified stale-lock cleanup is still in progress, wait briefly and rerun the command. Do not delete the lock manually.
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Set the live OpenShell inference route to the sandbox’s recorded provider and model when rebuild reports route drift.
Prepared backup recovery reuses its digest-verified pre-upgrade policy handoff at the deletion boundary. It does not recapture the live policy, and it stops before deletion if the handoff is missing or changed.
A gateway that reports no live inference route does not stop the rebuild. Replacement onboarding configures and verifies the recorded route before it recreates the sandbox.
The rebuild command preserves the mounted workspace and carries the complete
current OpenShell policy into sandbox recreation. For that one replacement
create, NemoClaw adds baseline fields required by the current replacement
image when they are absent from the live policy. Existing values, network
keys, and same-name live network entries win, so host changes are not
overwritten. NemoClaw does not save a desired-policy copy or enforce that
handoff after OpenShell creates the sandbox. When no host web-search key is
staged, rebuild preflight reuses an existing Brave or Tavily credential only
when the provider name, type, and credential key match the sandbox’s binding
on its recorded OpenShell gateway. A missing or mismatched binding stops
before recreation and requires the matching host environment variable before
you retry. After state restoration, NemoClaw clears a session’s stale model
and provider pin when it still targets the managed inference provider but no
longer matches the configured default model. The session then follows the
current default selected through inference set, while sessions pinned to
another provider remain unchanged.
Continue an Interrupted Replacement
Before rebuild deletes the existing sandbox, NemoClaw records a replacement journal in the active onboarding session.
The journal binds the operation to the sandbox name, recorded OpenShell gateway, source identity, and replacement settings.
It stores fingerprints instead of credential values or raw OpenShell sandbox IDs.
Rebuilding another sandbox can retain this session in .onboard-rebuild-<sandbox>.json under the selected NemoClaw state directory.
Rerunning the affected sandbox’s rebuild restores its retained session automatically.
For a non-default gateway port, these files reside under ~/.nemoclaw/gateways/<port>/.
Resume or clear an unfinished ordinary onboarding session before retrying retained rebuild recovery.
To discard that ordinary onboarding attempt and start over, run nemoclaw onboard --fresh as described in Previous onboarding session failed.
Do not manually delete onboard-session.json or retained .onboard-rebuild-<sandbox>.json files to resolve an interrupted replacement.
Keep the recovery files and rerun the affected sandbox’s rebuild with the same settings.
If rebuild stops after recording the journal, rerun the command with the same replacement settings. The rerun takes one of these actions:
- It continues deletion when the live sandbox still has the journaled source identity.
- It continues creation when the recorded OpenShell gateway explicitly reports the source sandbox as absent.
- It accepts an existing replacement only after its live identity and sandbox registry generation match the journal and it completes or verifies the recorded final handoff.
- It starts a new replacement when the journaled replacement provably never took effect.
An older recovery marker can lack an MCP handoff, as can an interruption before NemoClaw records the handoff.
NemoClaw reads MCP state again only when the source still exists and the matching journal remains in the planned or deleting phase.
If either check fails, the rerun stops without another delete attempt.
NemoClaw treats a journaled replacement as void when the sandbox registry row and the live same-name sandbox report the same OpenShell identity on the journaled gateway, and that identity is not the journaled replacement.
A registry row or a live sandbox on any other gateway leaves the journal in place, because that journal may still own an unregistered replacement on its own gateway.
The rerun atomically replaces the void journal with a fresh journal against that live source, without leaving an unjournaled interval. It then reports Replaced the void replacement journal for '<name>'; its source sandbox is registered and live.
A journal whose replacement never took therefore stops blocking rebuild for the rest of the session.
The journal binds the durable source registry row and normally does not resume after a command rewrites that row.
For an older N1x Docker managed-vLLM journal, recovery can continue only while the row contains the matching active route reservation.
Other changes to the fingerprinted source row remain fail-closed.
Messaging channel state is exempt: channels add, channels stop, channels start, and channels remove rewrite the recorded messaging plan, and the journal ignores that field.
Do not retry rebuild when a retained policy handoff contains a literal credential. Recover any required data from the backup before deletion, and keep the backup and handoff until that recovery is complete. Restore or select the recorded gateway and confirm openshell status is healthy. Only then use the ordinary fail-closed destroy flow and confirm OpenShell reports the sandbox deleted:
Do not use --force for this recovery. If deletion is unconfirmed, preserve the local recovery state and restore gateway access. After confirmed deletion, run nemoclaw onboard --name <new-sandbox-name>. Use a new sandbox name: recovery retirement refuses while the failed sandbox name is still present on its recorded gateway.
The printed backup path contains a validated native-home.tar and its bound rebuild-manifest.json. Before uploading any required data, verify that the retained archive still matches the manifest, extract it into a new private host directory, and inspect the paths you intend to recover:
Stop if the digest differs, the manifest has no nativeState.sha256, or extraction fails. The archive was published only after NemoClaw’s credential scan passed; do not copy the adjacent policy handoff, recovery marker, manifest, or any newly added credential material into the replacement. For each reviewed regular file or directory you need—including an unknown benign native-home path—use the validated upload wrapper and preserve its path below /sandbox:
The upload wrapper refuses symbolic links and special files. Preserve the retained backup and ask a NemoClaw maintainer to review those entries instead of bypassing that check. Verify the recovered files in the replacement before continuing. Remove the private extraction only after verification:
Only after the old sandbox is confirmed absent and required data recovery is complete, retire the exact failed transaction printed by rebuild:
--yes confirms that required data recovery is complete. The command rechecks the old sandbox on the transaction’s recorded gateway, binds cleanup to the exact sandbox and transaction, and removes that transaction’s retained policy handoff and recovery marker. It cannot retire another sandbox or transaction. Retirement does not need the sandbox to still be registered: the printed guidance runs it after nemoclaw <failed-sandbox-name> destroy --yes has removed the registry entry, and the command binds to the retained backup record and its recorded gateway instead. On failure, it prints the exact backup path that remains retained; preserve that path and retry only after correcting the reported condition. Keep the remaining backup until it is no longer needed.
If retirement reports that the recovery marker is invalid or unreadable, preserve the printed backup path, marker, and policy handoff. Do not edit the marker JSON or delete either recovery file. If only the marker’s mode or ownership changed, restore mode 0600 and ownership by the current NemoClaw user. Otherwise, restore the exact marker from a trusted backup of the same backup directory. Then rerun the same retirement command; it rechecks deletion on the recorded gateway before removing the handoff. If no trusted marker is available, preserve the backup and ask a NemoClaw maintainer to inspect it.
A mount-free journal written before NemoClaw bound host-mount identity remains resumable. An older journal for a rebuild with one or more host mounts stops as incompatible, even when the visible mount settings are unchanged, because it cannot prove the original host source identity. Preserve the live sandbox, onboarding session, printed backup, exact error, and the sandbox name, gateway, and journal phase from the Journaled replacement diagnostic. Do not change the target settings, edit the session, or delete the same-name sandbox. Ask a NemoClaw maintainer to review that retained recovery state before taking another recovery action.
An accepted replacement is not deleted again.
The command reports Sandbox '<name>' already holds the replacement from the interrupted rebuild. and preserves the state backup path when one exists.
Pass --verbose to include the replacement identifier, OpenShell gateway, and journal phase in rebuild diagnostics.
After the sandbox registry proves the journaled replacement identity and generation, NemoClaw removes an obsolete source image that it owns. It retains the image when the source is shared or the registered replacement reuses it. If image removal fails, NemoClaw keeps the accepted replacement and tells you to run nemoclaw gc for cleanup.
NemoClaw fails closed when the selected gateway, replacement settings, durable source registry fields, or live source or target identity no longer matches the journal. The error names the sandbox and the mismatch that stopped recovery. Do not delete a same-name sandbox to bypass this check. Inspect the named OpenShell gateway and sandbox, correct the reported drift, and rerun the original command. Visible settings cannot correct the legacy host-mount journal case described above.
A same-name recreation started by nemoclaw onboard uses the same replacement journal. If that recreation is interrupted after the Journaled replacement message, rerun the original onboarding command with the same target settings. The active replacement can continue without adding --resume. Use --resume for interrupted onboarding steps that occur before a replacement journal exists.
If the complete native home/workspace cannot be archived, NemoClaw reports the transfer failure and stops before deleting the original sandbox.
This fail-closed behavior also applies to rebuild --force; NemoClaw never publishes a partial native-home archive as a restore source.
NemoClaw removes failed native-state captures when cleanup succeeds instead of retaining them as incomplete recovery archives.
If that cleanup also fails, NemoClaw reports and retains the incomplete backup path.
Preserve that path while investigating the reported failure, or remove it only after the failure is resolved and you have confirmed that the original sandbox remains intact.
Repair source access, free backup-disk space, or remove credential-bearing content identified by the error, then rerun the rebuild while the original sandbox remains intact.
rebuild --force skips the confirmation prompt. When the sandbox has MCP
servers, NemoClaw must read the agent-native MCP source before any destructive
step. --force does not bypass an unavailable, unsafe, or conflicting source.
NemoClaw rechecks that source-derived bridge snapshot immediately before
deletion and stops if the source, target, policy, provider, or recorded
gateway changed. The independently captured live OpenShell policy is handed to
replacement creation unchanged. NemoClaw sends the delete request and every
deletion-confirmation lookup to the sandbox’s exact recorded gateway. Across
every rebuild path, NemoClaw does not attempt to stop the local NVIDIA NIM
through the delete attempt. Cleanup is attempted on a best-effort basis only
after deletion is positively confirmed. After a nonzero delete, an explicit
missing result converges as deleted. A Ready or Running result triggers an
attempt to restore prepared MCP state. NemoClaw reports any MCP restoration
failure and does not present the operation as a successful rollback. Any
partial or unreachable result remains ambiguous. NemoClaw preserves the
bounded MCP handoff and rebuild-recovery record, does not attempt to stop NIM,
and does not claim that the original sandbox is intact. Inspect the live
sandbox and gateway state before retrying recovery. This recovery also stops
for incomplete MCP adds or ambiguous ownership. An error after a successful
no-op does not fall back to the host-side path.
Refer to nemoclaw <name> rebuild for flag details.
Use the Canonical Configuration Workflows
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Use Switch Inference Providers to change a model or provider.
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Use Credential Rotation to reset or replace a stored provider credential.
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Use Customize the Network Policy to add or remove policy presets.
Related Topics
- Persist Sandbox State for the state-preservation contract.
- Troubleshooting for
privileged control unavailable, stopped sandboxes, and failed rebuilds.