OpenClaw Silicon Valley Build with Prompt

Prompt

You are an expert Linux homelab architect, AI agent systems builder, and technical writer. Create a complete, beginner-friendly, step-by-step guide for a first-time installer.

Goal

Produce a practical guide for installing and configuring OpenClaw with Mission Control on a minimal Rocky Linux 9.7 system, using a local Ollama-hosted Gemma 4 model as the LLM backend, with a Telegram interface, and a themed agent team based on the cast of Silicon Valley.

System details

Guide requirements

Write the guide for someone who has never installed OpenClaw before. Use clear explanations before commands, explain why each major step matters, and avoid assuming prior OpenClaw knowledge.

Storage and filesystem requirements

Installation scope

The guide must include:

  1. Base OS preparation for Rocky Linux 9.7 minimal
  2. Required packages and utilities
  3. NVIDIA driver installation for Rocky Linux 9.7
  4. Verification that the GPU is usable
  5. Ollama installation
  6. Choosing and pulling the largest Gemma 4 model that realistically fits in 8 GB VRAM, and explain the tradeoffs
  7. Configuring Ollama as a local service
  8. Installing OpenClaw
  9. Configuring OpenClaw to use the local Ollama Gemma 4 model
  10. Installing and configuring Mission Control
  11. Configuring a Telegram interface for OpenClaw
  12. Startup, enablement, and persistence across reboots
  13. Validation and smoke testing
  14. Troubleshooting section for common failure cases
  15. Security hardening basics for a home lab deployment
  16. Backup/update strategy

Model selection requirement

Because the system has an RTX 2070 with 8 GB VRAM, explicitly choose the largest Gemma 4 variant that should fit reasonably on this hardware when served by Ollama.

Agent design requirement

Create a themed agent team for a company called Pied-Piper HQ. Do not use Pied Piper as the company name. Map these agents to roles inspired by Silicon Valley:

For each agent, include:

The agent team should cover at least:

Keep the character inspiration light and fun, but still professional and useful in a real homelab environment.

Mission Control requirement

Include a section that designs and configures a Mission Control view for Pied-Piper HQ. The guide should describe:

Output format requirement

Structure the response as a real install guide with these sections:

  1. Overview
  2. Architecture plan
  3. Prerequisites
  4. Storage layout under /data
  5. Rocky Linux prep
  6. NVIDIA driver install
  7. Ollama install and model setup
  8. OpenClaw install
  9. Mission Control install
  10. Telegram integration
  11. Pied-Piper HQ agent roster
  12. First-run validation
  13. Troubleshooting
  14. Security and maintenance
  15. Next improvements

Style requirements

Important constraints

If upstream project details are uncertain

If exact package names, repo names, service names, or install steps may vary by release, explicitly label them as:

Deliverable

Return only the finished guide. Do not ask follow-up questions. Do not summarize what you are going to do. Just produce the guide.

Overview

This guide walks you through installing and wiring up a local-first Pied-Piper HQ assistant stack on a fresh Rocky Linux 9.7 minimal install, using:

You’ll end up with a small team of themed agents (inspired by the Silicon Valley cast) that you can talk to from Telegram and manage in a Mission Control dashboard.

Architecture plan

At a high level, your setup will look like this:

  1. Rocky Linux 9.7 host
    • NVIDIA drivers + CUDA stack for your RTX 2070.12
    • Systemd services for Ollama and OpenClaw.
  2. Ollama
    • Installed natively on Rocky.
    • Runs as a background service exposing a local HTTP API on http://localhost:11434.3
    • Stores Gemma 4 model weights and related data under /data/ollama.
  3. Model choice: Gemma 4 E4B via Ollama
    • Gemma 4 comes in E2B, E4B, 26B A4B, and 31B.43
    • According to Google’s Gemma 4 memory table, E4B in 4‑bit quantization (Q4_0) needs about 5 GB VRAM, while E2B needs about 3.2 GB, and the 26B/31B variants require 15.6 GB–17.4 GB VRAM or more.4
    • With an RTX 2070 (8 GB VRAM), the largest Gemma 4 tier that realistically fits for general use is Gemma 4 E4B in Q4_0, exposed in Ollama as gemma4:e4b.34
    • Larger 26B/31B tiers are not practical on 8 GB VRAM; E4B is the “max safe” choice, and E2B is the fallback if you see OOMs or slowdowns.4
  4. OpenClaw + Mission Control
    • OpenClaw is installed and configured via Ollama (ollama launch openclaw).56
    • The gateway runs as a background process; Mission Control is accessible via browser (e.g. http://localhost:18789).7
    • OpenClaw is configured to use your local gemma4:e4b model as its default provider, not cloud APIs.53
  5. Telegram
    • A Telegram bot created via BotFather with an API token and chat ID.89
    • OpenClaw’s channels configuration wired to that bot using openclaw configure --section channels.65
  6. Pied-Piper HQ
    • A themed agent roster (Richard, Gilfoyle, Dinesh, Big Head, Jared, Monica).
    • Mission Control dashboard views tuned around: coding, infra, security, docs, coordination, and research.

Prerequisites

Before you start:

  1. Base system
    • Rocky Linux 9.7 minimal installed and booting cleanly.
    • You have a non-root user with sudo access (examples will use tetraserv).
    • System is connected to the internet (for package and model downloads).
  2. Access
    • SSH access or local console with copy–paste capability.
    • A browser on your LAN to open Mission Control (or use text-mode via local browser/SSH tunneling).
  3. Accounts
    • Telegram account on your phone or desktop.
    • Ability to talk to @BotFather in Telegram to create a bot.98
  4. Hardware
    • Intel i5‑8700K, 32 GB RAM, RTX 2070 8 GB VRAM, 1 TB NVMe, 5 TB HDD (as provided).
    • Enough free space and patience for model downloads (several GB per model).3

Storage layout under /data

You’ll keep everything for this project under /data so it’s easy to back up, move, and snapshot.

We’ll use:

If the HDD is a separate block device and not mounted yet, mount it at e.g. /mnt/hdd and then bind-mount parts into /data/backups later. That is environment-specific, so adjust as needed.

Create directories and set ownership

  1. Create base layout (run as root or with sudo): 
    sudo mkdir -p \
  /data/ollama \
  /data/openclaw/app \
  /data/openclaw/config \
  /data/openclaw/logs \
  /data/mission-control \
  /data/backups \
  /data/archive
  2. Make your main user the owner so OpenClaw and tools can write there: 
    sudo chown -R tetraserv:tetraserv /data
sudo chmod -R 750 /data

You can later tighten specific subdirectories (e.g. backups) with chmod 700.

Rocky Linux prep

These steps assume a fresh Rocky 9.7 minimal installation.

1. Update the base system

sudo dnf update -y
sudo dnf install -y epel-release

2. Install common tools

sudo dnf install -y \
  git curl wget vim tmux htop \
  unzip tar bzip2 jq \
  firewalld policycoreutils-python-utils \
  bash-completion

Enable and start firewalld:

sudo systemctl enable --now firewalld

You’ll open ports later as needed.

3. Install Node.js (for OpenClaw)

OpenClaw requires modern Node.js and npm. The general guidance is Node.js 22 or newer.7

Rocky’s built-in modules may not ship Node 22 yet. Use the NodeSource RPM repo (this is a common pattern, but verify in upstream docs before running; version names may change):

curl -fsSL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo bash -
sudo dnf install -y nodejs
node -v
npm -v

NVIDIA driver install

You want the official NVIDIA driver with CUDA support for your RTX 2070 so Ollama can use GPU acceleration.

Rocky Linux has an official guide using the NVIDIA CUDA repo and nvidia-driver module.12

1. Enable required repos and tools

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb
sudo dnf install -y epel-release
sudo dnf groupinstall -y "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install -y \
  kernel-devel-matched kernel-headers \
  dkms \
  pciutils elfutils-libelf-devel \
  libglvnd-opengl libglvnd-glx libglvnd-devel \
  acpid

2. Add NVIDIA CUDA repo

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo \
  https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel9/$(uname -i)/cuda-rhel9.repo
sudo dnf clean expire-cache

3. Disable the Nouveau driver

Disable the open-source Nouveau driver to avoid conflicts:

sudo grubby --args="nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau" --update-kernel=ALL

If you have Secure Boot enabled, you may need to enroll DKMS keys with mokutil (see Rocky’s NVIDIA docs for details; verify in upstream docs before running).21

4. Install NVIDIA driver (proprietary, compute+desktop)

For a compute + desktop capable setup on Rocky 9, using the proprietary kernel module:

sudo dnf module enable -y nvidia-driver:latest-dkms
sudo dnf install -y nvidia-driver nvidia-driver-cuda kmod-nvidia-latest-dkms

5. Reboot and verify GPU

sudo reboot

After reboot, check:

nvidia-smi

You should see your RTX 2070 listed with driver version, CUDA version, and usage. If nvidia-smi fails, revisit the Rocky + NVIDIA driver docs before continuing.12

Ollama install and model setup

Ollama is your local model runtime, exposing a simple HTTP API and CLI.3

1. Install Ollama on Rocky Linux

Ollama provides a generic Linux install script for x86_64 systems.3

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

Check version:

ollama --version

If ollama is not found, log out/log in or check echo $PATH. If still missing, verify in upstream docs before running, as install paths or scripts may have changed.113

2. Ensure Ollama service is running

sudo systemctl enable --now ollama
sudo systemctl status ollama

You should see the service as active (running). If your install script uses a different service name (e.g. ollama.service vs ollama-daemon.service), adjust accordingly (example configuration – adjust for current release naming).1210

Test the local API:

curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags

You should get a JSON list of models (initially empty).3

By default, Ollama stores models under a system directory (e.g. /usr/share/ollama or /var/lib/ollama depending on your version; verify in upstream docs). To keep your model data in /data/ollama, you can use environment variables via systemd.113

Create an environment file (this is based on an example from Ollama systemd discussions; treat as example configuration).10

sudo tee /etc/ollama.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
# Example: put models under /data/ollama
OLLAMA_MODELS=/data/ollama
EOF

Edit the Ollama service unit:

sudo sed -i 's#^\[Service\]#[Service]\nEnvironmentFile=/etc/ollama.conf#' /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart ollama

Note: The exact env var (OLLAMA_MODELS) and supported overrides can change. Check the latest Ollama README before relying on this pattern.11

4. Pull Gemma 4 models

Ollama installs no models by default; you pull them explicitly.3

We’ll pull both E4B (primary) and E2B (fallback):

ollama pull gemma4:e4b
ollama pull gemma4:e2b

List models:

ollama list

You should see at least:

5. Smoke test Gemma 4 E4B from CLI

ollama run gemma4:e4b "Summarize the mission of Pied-Piper HQ in two sentences."

If this is slow or crashes with CUDA/VRAM errors, fall back to:

ollama run gemma4:e2b "Summarize the mission of Pied-Piper HQ in two sentences."

On an RTX 2070:

OpenClaw install

OpenClaw integrates tightly with Ollama. The recommended path from Ollama’s docs is to let Ollama install and configure OpenClaw for you via ollama launch openclaw.56

1. Install OpenClaw via Ollama

From your normal user (e.g. tetraserv):

ollama launch openclaw --model gemma4:e4b

This flow (per Ollama’s integration docs):65

If you instead want to configure without launching the gateway right away:

ollama launch openclaw --config

This lets you adjust settings (like model choice) and then start the gateway later.5

If ollama launch openclaw fails due to Node.js or npm version issues, verify your Node version and check OpenClaw’s official docs for current requirements.76

2. Verify OpenClaw CLI

After installation, you should have the openclaw CLI available globally:

openclaw --version

You can check gateway status:

openclaw gateway status

You should see the gateway as Running (or similar) when started.75

3. Configure OpenClaw to use local Gemma 4 by default

If you didn’t already specify the model during ollama launch, you can set or change it later:

ollama launch openclaw --model gemma4:e4b

ollama launch openclaw --model gemma4:e2b

4. Mission Control basic access

OpenClaw’s Windows install guides reference Mission Control as the dashboard accessible at http://localhost:18789 once the agent is running. On Linux installs via Ollama, the same Mission Control service is exposed by the gateway.7

From a browser on the Rocky box or via SSH tunnel, open:

You should see Mission Control showing the OpenClaw gateway status, logs, and memory usage.7

Mission Control install

Mission Control is part of the OpenClaw stack; you don’t install it separately. You do, however, need to make sure:

1. Confirm Mission Control is reachable

From the Rocky host:

curl -I http://localhost:18789

You should see an HTTP 200/302/other non-error code if the UI is up.

If you want to reach it from another machine on your LAN, open the firewalld port:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=18789/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Then from your workstation browser, visit:

2. Example systemd service for gateway persistence (optional)

If ollama launch openclaw doesn’t already set up a persistent service, you can add a simple systemd unit to start the gateway on boot. Treat this as example configuration – adjust for current release naming and paths.

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/openclaw-gateway.service >/dev/null <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=OpenClaw Gateway
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=tetraserv
Group=tetraserv
WorkingDirectory=/home/tetraserv
ExecStart=/usr/bin/openclaw gateway start
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now openclaw-gateway

Check status:

systemctl status openclaw-gateway

Telegram integration

You’ll wire Telegram into OpenClaw so you can talk to the Pied-Piper HQ agents from your phone.

1. Create a Telegram bot with BotFather

On your phone or desktop:

  1. Open Telegram.
  2. Search for @BotFather and start a chat.89
  3. Send /newbot.
  4. Follow the prompts:
    • Bot name: e.g. Pied-Piper HQ Bot.
    • Username: must end with bot, e.g. Pied-Piper_hq_bot.8
  5. BotFather replies with a message containing:
    • A link to your bot (https://t.me/your_bot_username).
    • An HTTP API token (keep this secret).98

Copy the bot token; you’ll need it for OpenClaw.

2. Get your chat ID

Simplest method (from a browser):9

  1. Start a conversation with your bot in Telegram (send any message).
  2. In a browser, go to:
https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_BOT_TOKEN>/getUpdates
  1. In the JSON output, find the "chat" object and copy the "id" value.9

Keep both:

3. Configure Telegram in OpenClaw

OpenClaw provides a channels configuration section for messaging platforms.65

Run:

openclaw configure --section channels

Because OpenClaw’s configuration flows can change over time, treat the exact prompts as example configuration and rely on the on-screen help and current docs if you see differences.56

After configuration, restart the gateway if it doesn’t restart automatically:

openclaw gateway restart
# or, if using systemd:
sudo systemctl restart openclaw-gateway

Send a test message to your bot; you should see replies from Gemma 4 via OpenClaw.

Pied-Piper HQ agent roster

This section defines a themed agent team for Pied-Piper HQ, lightly inspired by Silicon Valley but written to be genuinely useful in a homelab.

You can represent these as separate OpenClaw “agents” or routing profiles in Mission Control (exact implementation depends on your OpenClaw version; treat this as example configuration).

Richard – Lead Architect \& Refactorer

Gilfoyle – Infrastructure \& Reliability

Dinesh – Coding \& Experiments

Big Head – Documentation \& Onboarding

Jared – Project Coordination \& Safety

Monica – Research \& Product Strategy

First-run validation

Run these checks in order to confirm that the stack is working end-to-end.

1. GPU and drivers

nvidia-smi

2. Ollama service and model

sudo systemctl status ollama
curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags
ollama run gemma4:e4b "Say 'Pied-Piper HQ online' in one sentence."

If you see VRAM errors, test with E2B:

ollama run gemma4:e2b "Say 'Pied-Piper HQ online' in one sentence."

3. OpenClaw gateway

openclaw gateway status

If not running:

openclaw gateway start

or, if using the systemd unit:

sudo systemctl restart openclaw-gateway
sudo systemctl status openclaw-gateway

You should see the gateway running without errors.5

4. Mission Control UI

From the Rocky host:

curl -I http://localhost:18789

Then from your workstation browser:

Confirm you can:

5. Telegram loop

From Telegram:

  1. Send “/start” or a simple message to your bot.
  2. You should see a reply handled via OpenClaw using Gemma 4:
    • If you’ve set routing, you could test by saying “Ask Richard to refactor this function: …” or “Gilfoyle, check my infra idea.”

If no response, revisit the Telegram integration section, checking:

Troubleshooting

Here are common failure modes and how to approach them.

NVIDIA / GPU issues

Ollama / model issues

OpenClaw / Mission Control issues

Telegram issues

Security and maintenance

This is a single-node homelab deployment, but you still want basic hygiene.

1. OS and package updates

Schedule regular updates:

sudo dnf update -y

2. Firewall and network exposure

3. User separation

4. Secrets management

5. Backup and restore strategy

Use your HDD for backups:

  1. Configs and definitions
    • Periodically archive:
      • /data/openclaw/config
      • /data/mission-control
      • Any custom agent definitions.
  2. Ollama models
    • You can always re-pull models with ollama pull, so you usually don’t need to back them up.
    • If bandwidth is constrained, a compressed backup of /data/ollama to your HDD is reasonable.

Example simple backup script (run daily via cron):

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
BACKUP_DIR=/data/backups/$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
tar czf "$BACKUP_DIR/openclaw-config.tgz" /data/openclaw/config
tar czf "$BACKUP_DIR/mission-control.tgz" /data/mission-control

6. Updating Ollama and OpenClaw

After updates:

Next improvements

Once the base Pied-Piper HQ stack is live and stable, you can:

  1. Add more local models
    • Pull additional models via ollama pull for specialized tasks (e.g. smaller fast models for quick replies, coding-specialized variants, etc.).113
    • Use OpenClaw’s configuration to route certain tasks to different models (e.g. use E2B for quick Telegram responses and E4B for deep research).
  2. Enhance Mission Control dashboards
    • Create separate panes for:
      • Coding queue (Richard \& Dinesh).
      • Infra queue (Gilfoyle \& Jared).
      • Docs \& onboarding (Big Head).
      • Research \& strategy (Monica).
    • Add approval steps (Jared) before executing any infra-changing action suggested by Gilfoyle or Dinesh.
  3. Integrate more channels
    • Use openclaw configure --section channels to add Slack, Discord, or other messaging apps if you later want multi-channel access.56
  4. Automate backups and health checks
    • Add cron jobs or systemd timers for backups, and simple health check scripts that alert you (via Telegram) if nvidia-smi, ollama, or the gateway are failing.

With this setup, Pied-Piper HQ becomes a durable, GPU‑accelerated, mostly local agent system you can grow over time while keeping control of your data and infrastructure. 1415161718192021222324252627282930

⁂

  1. https://docs.rockylinux.org/9/desktop/display/installing_nvidia_gpu_drivers/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  2. https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/driver-installation-guide/rocky-linux.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  3. https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs/integrations/ollama ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19 ↩20

  4. https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs/core ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  5. https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/openclaw ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  6. https://ollama.com/blog/openclaw-tutorial ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  7. https://www.nimopc.com/blogs/our-blog/2026-guide-how-to-install-openclaw-ai-on-windows ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  8. https://www.piwebsolution.com/create-a-telegram-bot-using-botfather-and-get-the-api-token/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  9. https://www.mikemurphy.co/telegram/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  10. https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/3516 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  11. https://github.com/ollama/ollama/blob/main/README.md ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  12. https://www.reddit.com/r/ollama/comments/1jakaup/ollama_running_on_ubuntu_server_systemd_service/ ↩

  13. https://dev.to/geek_/gemma-4-vram-requirements-the-hardware-guide-i-wish-i-had-3plo ↩

  14. https://tutorialforlinux.com/2025/10/30/how-to-install-ollama-on-rocky-linux-9-step-by-step/ ↩

  15. https://huggingface.co/SanctumAI/gemma-2-9b-it-GGUF ↩

  16. https://x.com/BentoBoiNFT/status/2028957770687427011 ↩

  17. https://theserverside.tistory.com/3310 ↩

  18. https://huggingface.co/google/gemma-2-9b-it/discussions/39 ↩

  19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YQZ05q4Nps ↩

  20. https://gemma-4.org ↩

  21. https://ollama.com/library/gemma2:9b ↩

  22. https://ollama.com/blog/gemma2 ↩

  23. https://ollama.com/VladimirGav/gemma4-26b-16GB-VRAM ↩

  24. https://ollama.com/library/gemma2:9b-instruct-q4_K_M/blobs/109037bec39c ↩

  25. https://unsloth.ai/docs/models/gemma-4 ↩

  26. https://ollama.com/library/gemma ↩

  27. https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1drxhlh/gemma_2_9b_appreciation_post/ ↩

  28. https://localllm.in/blog/ollama-vram-requirements-for-local-llms ↩

  29. https://ollama.com/mannix/gemma2-9b ↩

  30. https://dev.to/purpledoubled/how-to-run-googles-gemma-4-locally-with-ollama-all-4-model-sizes-compared-2pbh ↩