ML 135: OpenClaw on Ubuntu Linux (15 pts extra)

What You Need

A hypervisor, such as VMware or VirtualBox.

Purpose

To practice using the popular AI agent, OpenClaw. I am following this video.

Prepare an Ubuntu Desktop Virtual Machine

Do project ED 33 first.

Installing OpenClaw

In a web browser, go to https://openclaw.ai/.

Scroll down to the "Quick Start" section, as shown below.

Copy the command shown in the box.

On your Ubuntu desktop, in a Terminal, paste in that command and press Enter.

Type your password when you are prompted to.

Wait while software downloads and installs.

When the installation is done, it starts asking you questions, as shown below.

Make these choices, using the keyboard arrows to choose and confirming the choices with Enter:

Continue? Yes
Onboarding mode: QuickStart
Model/auth provider: scroll down with the down-arrow and choose "Skip for now"
Filter models by provider: "All providers"
Default model: "Enter model manually"
Default model: delete "anthropic/claude-opus-4-6" and replace it with "Ollama/Demo" (not a real model, just a placeholder for now)
Select channel (QuickStart): scroll down with the down-arrow and choose "Skip for now"

You see the location of the configuration file, which is ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json as shown below.

At the bottom of the screen, it asks "Configure skills now?". Select No.

At the bottom of the screen, it asks "Enable hooks?". Press the SPACEBAR to select "Skip for now" and press Enter.

An error message appears, as shown below.

Execute these commands:

echo export PATH="/home/student/.npm-global/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc openclaw gateway

Leave this program running.

Open a new Terminal and execute this command:

openclaw dashboard

Firefox opens, showing the OpenClaw GUI Chat page, as shown below. At the bottom, send a message, such as "Hello".

The agent fails with an error message, as shown below.

This is because we haven't configured a LLM model yet.

Installing ollama

Ollama runs a LLM locally on your machine.

It can also act as a proxy for a cloud model, which is what we'll use it for.

In a web browser, go to https://ollama.com/.

Copy the command shown in the box, as shown below.

On your Ubuntu desktop, open a new Terminal window, paste in that command and press Enter.

Type your password when you are prompted to.

Wait while software downloads and installs.

Stopping the Gateway

In the Terminal running the gateway, press Ctrl+C to stop it.

Configuring Ollama to run with OpenClaw

Execute this command:

ollama launch openclaw

A list of models appears, as shown below.

Select "minimix-m2.5:cloud" and press Enter.

It asks whether to download the model.

Say Yes.

An ollama login page appears in Firefox.

A page offers to connect OpeClaw to your Google account, as shown below.

Click Connect.

Look in your Terminal window.

You see the message shown below, and the question "Proceed?".

Tell it Yes.

It says "I understand the risks."

Tell it Yes.

Using OpenClaw

In Firefox, make your window wide enough to see the left pane.

In the left pane, scroll down and click Agents.

You see the minimax agent, as shown below.

On the left side, at the top, click Chat.

Enter this prompt:

What operating system is this computer using?

You see a sensible answer, as shown below.

The agent is working!

Flag ML 135.1: Logs (15 pts)
On the left side, click Logs.
The flag is covered by a green rectangle in the image below.

Posted 3-3-26
Simplified 3-5-26