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Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
31–40 of 69 posts
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#32I'm surprised people don't use Lima (quick headless local VMs where you can mount a folder). [1] [1] - https://lima-vm.io/docs/examples/ai/
What's the difference between lima and vagrant?
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#33It's hilarious watching people discover security again. Everyone plugging their favorite sandbox technology. Yes, sand boxing processes is a thing that has existed for a long time and there are a million tools that do it. Systemd has it built in for example. Even claude code itself has sandboxing and permissions built in.
Process isolation is not the danger with OpenClaw. Giving an LLM access to all your shit is the problem. My solution is to treat it like a human, give it it's own accounts, scoped to what you want it to do and accept the risks associated with that. If I had a human assistant I wanted to read my email, I'd set up an inbox for them specifically and forward what I want them to screen. I don't use OpenClaw, but have a similar harness I built that runs as an unprivileged Linux user with access to just what I want it to access.
I know it's not in vogue to actually know how technology works anymore, but we have literally decades worth of technology solutions for authentication/authorization, just fucking use it.
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#34I recently installed Zeroclaw instead of OpenClaw on a new VPS(It seems a little safer). It wasn’t as straightforward as OpenClaw, but it was easy to setup. I added skills that call endpoints and also cron jobs to trigger recurrent skills. The endpoints are hosted on a separate VPS running FastAPI (Hetzner, ~$12/month for two vps).
I’m assuming the claw might eventually be compromised. If that happens, the damage is limited: they could steal the GLM coding API key (which has a fixed monthly cost, so no risk of huge bills), spam the endpoints (which are rate-limited), or access a Telegram bot I use specifically for this project
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#35Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#36Your AI should not be in a position to submit a resignation email or send a text to your partner asking for a divorce.
As long as the email or text includes the disclaimer "generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence" then you should be fine.
Hi $wife,
You're absolutely right. Let's divorce.
I've emailed every lawyer in the state.
--
Sent from my OpenClaw
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#37It's hilarious watching people discover security again. Everyone plugging their favorite sandbox technology. Yes, sand boxing processes is a thing that has existed for a long time and there are a million tools that do it. Systemd has it built in for example. Even claude code itself has sandboxing and permissions built in. Process isolation is not the danger with OpenClaw. Giving an LLM access to all your shit is the…
[deleted]
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#38serious question why anyone on hn would run this?
Right? It's asking for trouble.
I was in the repebble comments a few days ago and this person rolled their own for very obvious reasons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47078454
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#39The recent releases of OpenClaw have made running it on docker/podman much easier. I've been running it on a stand alone Lenovo Thinkcentre running inside docker. For my needs the setup works well. There are some limitations like hardware and filesystem access with my workstation (macbook) but largely solvable and I like the isolation. For locking it down further, particularly on the network level someone recently released https://nono.sh/ which seems promising. I've been using https://clawchat.dev/ on my macbook for chatting with the openclaw agent. It is rough around the edges but gets the job done.
Re: Setting up OpenClaw on a cloud VM
#40serious question why anyone on hn would run this?
Both replies to your question give you the two sides. It is a scary, stupid thing to give your house keys to, but it is also very interesting like two trains crashing.
Maybe a middle ground would be isolating it like the article suggests, and poking it with a stick (giving it limited, or newly created accounts) to see what it can do?