OpenClaw

[keithy]

Minimal community edition of Armbian to run a minimal OS, podman and OpenClaw

(Just wanted to share my recent success)



Downloaded community rolling release minimal Arabian image from:

https://www.armbian.com/rock64/

Etchered onto 4Gb SD-Card.



Booted, user:root pass:1234

Added ssh key, disable root password.

Ran the armbian-update



$> sudo apt-get install f2fs-tools

$> armbian-config (transfer os to internal emmc 

(this worked like a charm, uses f2fs and leave /boot as ext)



$>  sudo apt-get install git

$>  sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https



Using podman required the following dependencies:

$> apt install uidmap

$> apt install nftables

$> apt install catatonit

$> apt install passt

$> apt install podman

$> apt install podman-compose



$> git clone --depth 10 https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw



$> # tmp isn’t big enough for the next steps

$> mount -o remount,size=2600M /tmp



$> cd openclaw

$> ./setup-podman.sh --quadlet

$> sudo systemctl --machine openclaw@ --user start openclaw.service

However, I struggled to access logs of what was going on inside podman.

Plan B mise-en-place managed tools

Install mise-en-place using apt
from: https://mise.jdx.dev/installing-mise.html

Code:

sudo apt update -y && sudo apt install -y curl
sudo install -dm 755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fSs https://mise.jdx.dev/gpg-key.pub | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/mise-archive-keyring.asc 1> /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/mise-archive-keyring.asc] https://mise.jdx.dev/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mise.list
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y mise

As user claw.

Add activation to ~/.bashrc
$> echo 'eval "$(mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc

$> mise use -g node@22
$> mise use -g pnpm
$> mise settings set npm.package_manager pnpm
$> mise use -g npm:openclaw
$> which openclaw
$> /home/claw/.local/share/mise/installs/npm-openclaw/2026.2.21-2/bin/openclaw
$> openclaw onboard