No I didn’t , though it would come over as put of the transfer, guess it did not
It doesn’t seem to. I was helping out someone else who discovered the same thing.
ok , will do it again also
All is well , Connected
Thanks
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Hi Paul,
Thank you for your excellent video on Start9 Server pure, but half the price. I am just a beginner and start from scratch. What OS do I need to install on a barebone Minisforum UN1290 to install Start9 as I am following along your video. Do I need to install W-10 or Ubuntu first on the NVMe before I can install start9? Or can I install start9 straight away from a thumb USB when I have put the RAM and NVMe in the Minisforum UN1290. Your new video on the Dreamquest N150 it showed installation straight from the thumb USB stick. Can you give me advise what to install first.
Wonder656
Welcome to the forum! You do not need to install anything onto the NVMe before StartOS. If you have access to another computer, you can flash the installer onto your USB thumb drive there, and then boot from it on the UN1290. In the other video, I just flashed it from the Minisforum since it already had Windows installed and was already set up in front of the camera.
Just a heads up about the UN1290 model – you will need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor temporarily, because it won’t boot after you finish the installation. I posted instructions for how to fix that problem over on another thread here. Once you apply the fix, then you won’t need the keyborad, mouse, and monitor anymore.
Thank you very much for your your advise and link. I will update on my progress and have btc knots operational.
Hi Paul,
After several tries I managed to install start9 on the minisforum UN1290. Installed bitcoin knots, after 4 hours of waiting and 10.76% blockchain download, the process freezes. Waited an other 3 hours but no continuation of downloading the blockchain.
So I decided to do a complete factory reset and start from the beginning. Unfortunately start9 will not see the NVME when booting up with start9 USB. In the booting section I have selected USB NVME as nr 1 and NVME as second.
With Linux Mint 2.2 Mate on a thumb USB I don’t know how to fix this issue. Do you have a clue how to get NVME be selected for starting start9.
My guess is there is a problem with the NVMe drive (hopefully you have not got one of the fake drives that report more space than they actually have). I would start by removing the NVMe drive, and re-installing it, being careful to make sure it is properly seated.
Then boot into Linux Mint, and see if the NVMe drive shows up in gparted. If so, see if you can clear it off. Right-click on any partitions (I think there are typically 2 of them) and if there are options to disable or unmount them, then do that. Then right-click on them and delete them. Once any partitions are deleted, go to Device > Create Partition Table > GPT. If at any step it shows a message something about the kernal not able to see the changes (I don’t recall the exact message – I’ve seen it several times when clearing an LVM drive like the one Start9 created), then reboot the computer and repeat the above steps until the NVMe drive is clear and there are no partitions on it.
Then see if you can re-install StartOS. If you run into the same problem during Knots syncing, go check in StartOS the amount of disk space used (under System > Monitor > Disk > Used).
Thank you for your quick response. I will check tomorrow your recommendation how to tackle it. X my fingers that it will not be the fake drive.
Follow up on your first guess, you were right it is a fake drive. I was unable with gparted to select the NVME drive. Gparted came with a error frame and to continue it showed only the thumb drive with Linux Mint 2.2
Will it be possible to fix this NVME with a portable NVME M2 case and an other laptop (Mac) to format this SSD even if it is corrupted. Appreciate your advise.
Do you happen to have another NVMe drive that you can test with? If so, I’d confirm that there isn’t a hardware problem with the miniPC itself before spending on an adapter (unless you already have one). If the other drive works, then it might be worth a shot to see if the bad one can be repaired. Of course it needs to first be visible to the OS, otherwise you are dead in the water (so it would be a bit of a gamble to see if an adapter even makes it visible)
Do you know if the place you purchased the drive from supports returns for defective items? It could just be a bad drive (not necessarily a fake).
BTW, we are getting into the time of year where there is a lot of static electricity. You might want to get a grounding bracelet to use (or work near a water pipe you can periodically touch to ground yourself) while you are working on the miniPC.
Unfortunately I don’t have an other NVme drive. I am glad that your advise protect me from buying the adapter. I have to buy a new NVMe and I have made a mistake when I bought a cheap NVMe from aliexpress. Returning the item to Aliexpress and receiving an other will be more expensive as I don’t live in the USA. Besides shipping costs I also have to pay custom duties which adds to the price.
Your video Start9 only half the price is my inspiration to continue this project.
Paul,
Thanks for making your videos.
I found this video on YouTube in July 2025 and followed your instructions.
I have been running a Minis Forum node and mining with Knots/Datum/Ocean/Avalon Nano3s for a solid 3 months now.
The server / StartOS seems to be working without any problem.
My biggest challenge with all of this has been learning how to use the lightning network to collect payouts from Ocean. Do you have any videos about how a person should design their lightning network as a home miner?
I am running CLN and LND nodes on the Start9 server.
The LND node has 6 channels to outside lightning nodes. (sats come in from Ocean over the LND node then go to my CLN node for storage.)
The CLN node only has 1 channel to my LND node. (I am thinking of the CLN node as a wallet)
Is there an official instruction manual for the lightning network?
I have just been experimenting with trial an error …
I’m a newbie and really do not know what I am doing inside the Lightning layer when it comes to channel fee policy’s and channel management.
My fear is that the Lightning layer maintenance could become like a part time job.
What should I study to make the Lightning part of all this… less of a chore?
You’ve got the correct setup, I think. The main thing about choosing your fee policies, is to game-plan out the likely scenarios.
In my case, I want to allow newbies to connect to my node with small channels, to lower the entry barrier for people to run ASICs at home (with small payouts over Lightning). Since I know that is what most channels to my node will be created for, I can anticipate that these users are going to send out most of the capacity of their channel to create inbound liquidity, and that they are unlikely to have other channels with the broader network. So, I know I must calculate what fee rate to use, such that when I need to close (or splice in liquidity) to one of these channels, they will have paid enough sats in fees when they did that first send to open up inbound liquidity that I can afford to pay the base-layer transaction fee.
If your goal is helping to decentralize the Lightning network and help keep routing fees low, then you can keep your routing fees low, and the minimum channel balance high (so that you will mostly get connections from folks who have more experience with Lightning, and are less likely to be leaches), open large channels with several other well-connected nodes, and keep them balanced.
If your goal is collecting mining rewards and building a non-KYC stack with Bisq or Robosats over Lightning, then keep the routing fees low and the minimum channel capacity very high, have your CLN node for mining with a channel to your LND node, and your LND node have a couple of channels to well-connected nodes, where you have sent most of the sats out to open up inbound liquidity.
If you use your node for both mining/stacking and for everyday payments, a setup similar to the last one, but holding more of the liquidity on your side of the channels on your LND node.
There unfortunately isn’t a good resource for Lightning that I have found. There are lots of videos on various different components, and I have learned from my own as well as others’ mistakes (like BTC Sessions). I have been talking for a while about creating a video (or a couple videos) on Lightning, and I do plan to do that. My next couple of videos are going to be focused on equipping folks to be more effective in the spam war, but the Lightning tutorials will follow soon after.
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Looking forward towards your video’s on the spam distribution and how we can protect our systems to the max.
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Maybe making a future video about how to calculate lightning channel fee rates would be good.
When I set up the channels to my LND node with the default fee rates there was a lot of activity.
I was having to use Ride The Lightning to balance channels, and add Satoshi’s almost daily.
Then I read one of your posts where you said you raised your fees.
So I copied that (Base fee = 1000 mSats / Fee Rate = 10,000 milli mSats) and applied it to all my LND channels.
This has slowed down almost all activity except for the incoming mining rewards from Ocean.
Which is good. I think… I am not having to balance channels daily and continually add more bitcoin to lightning in order to balance channels.
Now, my problem is my CLN node is filling up with mining rewards and when I try to use Boltz to transfer Sats out of lightning into Sparrow wallet on my node. CLN gives an error about “unable to find a path without excessive fees”. (probably the excessive fees that I created on my LND channels?)
It feels like all the Sats I have on the lightning network are trapped there unless I close a channel.
I guess my goal is to collect mining rewards and get them off the lightning network without a bunch of small UTXOs and into cold storage.
Mine & HODL & hopefully be able to retire one day…
I really do not want to spend or buy anything with my satoshi using the lightning network.
I am under the impression that using the lightning network with Ocean is necessary to avoid a bunch of small UTXOs.
I’m just starting to learn how to stack Sats and I don’t want to create any taxable events.
I do like mining at home with Knots/Datum/Ocean to help keep Bitcoin mining decentralized, and have a vote to keep Bitcoin spam free.
Ah, yes, this is the beauty of the CLN<>LND channel. First make an invoice on you LND node, and pay it to yourself from you CLN node. Then continue mining until it fills up again, and repeat. Once you’ve done enough cycles to accumulate a sufficient amount of outbound liquidity on your other LND channels, do the Boltz.exchange swap from your LND node.
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I whole heartily concur 
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Side note for tut’s: The other day both Megalith channels and the channel with my cohort had local balance of all but maxed out (remote balances of 0.033). Couldn’t re-balance from any channel I had and thought about opening a 4th channel to WalletofSatoshi so I had somewhere to re-balance from but before I did that I sent Lighting from LND thru Boltz back to LND Onchain. When I went to open the channel with WoS the Megalith channel(s) balanced at around .80 so I didn’t have to open the WoS channel.
One to ponder for sure… curious what actually affected the balance; the Lighting out the OnChain back in to LND or just Lighting out? I’m going to test my theories out next month and move sats from Lighting to a cold wallet and skip the round trip back in.
Back to regularly scheduled thread…
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