New LND node runner here. If you backup via System \ Backups in the Start9 OS and ensure all services are selected, is there any need to backup via the LND software also?
I believe the StartOS backup is sufficient, but I’ll run some tests to make sure it is capturing everything. Backup / Restore functions are always a good thing to practice ahead of time before you actually need them, but with Lightning it is a bit more tricky in practice, since it is bad to have multiple instances of your node running (I’ve never done it myself, but StartOS gives you lots of warnings about it).
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Always curious…best practices. Before backing up would one want to shut down all services?
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I always shut down all the services first. I also take the opportunity to reboot the system after finishing the backup before starting the services up again.
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I backed up my channel, but I had to download the Blockchain again for some reason, and it appears that they closed my channels and ran away with my money. Can I get some help to see why they did that and how I can resolve it. I think I used pretty reputable lightning associates. I didn’t think they would burn me.
Here are a few questions to hopefully get a clearer picture of what happened:
What process did you follow for re-downloading the blockchain?
Has the blockchain finished re-downloading?
Did you change anything with the LND service, or was it just offline for a while?
How long was the LND service offline?
What was the liquidity of the channel in question (how many sats on your side, how many on theirs)?
What other channels do you have, what is their liquidity, and has the liquidity on them changed since the incident?
Are there any changes to the balance on your base layer wallet for LND since the incident?
I had to redo the whole startOS, It then backed up the whole server and then I noticed that I had to download the whole knots node again. From Sunday to Thursday it took to get back the node, electrs and lnd. It appeared that the coins where still there. I thought I had pulled a hodini. I unfortunately didn’t balance the channel correctly and I think they were lopsided. I initially brought in 1 mil SATS… I’m sick to my stomach just saying it. It opened up new channels, I only have 358,000 sats left. 215 in the lightning network.
bc1p25vpuf5kqptjjvg0d4ply54jqgwmk7525yr88xt787wv9jegrvuszdxfz0
bc1psad9h8vy69nt3f3jjrz4srx7dkcrv8h7uhpesxphxwcv6yel6s8srykm27
bc1p6g08xcdz6zsm8579hsvnakas9qlztv6c748pyrtp402c9w9h2j4s6uhqn0
bc1qyt9zeq64e53arh43gcnfj85m4m7zc57729w4ydm86crp6lncr3hq8239h0
are the four addresses the funds where confiscated too… I’m wondering if I’m hacked.
By “redo the whole startOS”, do you mean you reinstalled startOS from scratch and restored the services from a backup, or something else? If you restored LND from a backup, when was the backup made, and were the channels all present and balances correct at the time you made the backup?
How many channels were closed, and what nodes were they with?
When you say that there was 1 mil sats, were those sats all on your side of the channels?
For the 358,000 sats, were those already in your base-layer wallet before the channel closures?
In RTL:
- What do you currently see listed under Lightning > Peers/Channels for Open, Pending, and Closed?
- What do you currently see listed under Lightning > Transactions?
- What do you currently see listed under OnChain > UTXOs?
- What do you currently see listed under OnChain > Transactions?
Kinda curious why they would post their wallet address? Seems phishing to me in some kinda weird way.
EDIT: Those are the addresses that the OP thinks where the funds went. Sorry for the mis-read
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By “redo the whole startOS”, do you mean you reinstalled startOS from scratch and restored the services from a backup, or something else?
I did startOS from scratch after some failure. The back up was made around the end of June. Everything was situated and in order when I made the back up. At least 2 channels were closed, yet it’s not showing.
No all the liquidity was not on my side. I could send about 150,000 and receive like 800,000 or more sats.
Yes that 358,000 was the onchain balance not in lightning.
Lightning
2 peers/channels, 0 pending 0 closed
Lightning
0 transactions listed which seems strange as I tested several transactions
Onchain
4 utxos 16 transaction 1 dust transaction
I see 3 open channel transactions and one sweep with red triangle mentioning dust
One of the channels was with start9
So did you get your sats back yet?
No I haven’t. Strange how after I did the back up I looked and everything seemed good, then when I looked again all those channels were closed and new channels made with the BTC I had in the wallet. No history of the closing, but as you see, I got addresses the money was sent to in my transactions. It wouldn’t make sense, that the channels would be missing even if someone sent all of the money out of the channels. It must be a bug of sorts. If sweeps are channel closings, they need to be more accurate in indication. Lightning is start to get on my nerves, it’s the only place I’ve ever lost coins… Casa stole some of my coins when I had their little node and lightning channels… Balance kept being “rebalanced” losing sats…
Maybe install ThunderHub too. It gives you more data than RTL. The 2 of them together gleam more insight than just RTL alone.
Sorry to hear you are frustrated. I’ve never lost sats to a lightning connection…but I make sure I don’t dilly with small channels either.
It should accurately recall which nodes I had a channel with, it’s like they just disappeared, over 500,000 sats missing is not small for me…
I would have started my testing out with Core lightning, but the flawless virtual machine Paul graced us with inspired me to go LND first. I don’t like that they don’t have their own “platform” so to speak, bare bones… Is there another official way you can back up the channels. I missed the learning curve.
I did, missing the old channel info as well… What is the website you get the info for selecting channel partners again, mind went blank?
Um…are you talking about lightningnetwork.plus?
That was a hassle for me…the other operators I dealt with were not consistent. Downtime’s were a problem. Took 3 weeks to close a channel and get the sats back. It finally took me contacting the owners of the site and lodging complaints against the operator.
Just an FYI if that’s what you were thinking of.
EDIT: Or maybe your thinking of 1ml ?
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If I am reading this correctly, then you “only” lost 150K sats (plus min channel balances), correct? I am missing something in the steps here, though, because the ballances do not really add up:
You started with 1 million sats
- You have 357,000 sats in the base layer wallet
- You had 800,000 sats inbound liquidity
- You had 150,000 sats outbound liquidty
The total (base + inbound + outbound) would be 1,307,000 sats (which is more than you started with)
I believe I am missing some steps. Could you walk through, step by step, the process you did before making the backup (basically, everything that led up to that point in time). I just want to get an understanding of what the state should have looked like at that point, and then we can try to figure out what must have happened after that point to lead to the current state.
The steps should look something like this:
- Moved ## sats to the base layer wallet
- Opened a channel with NodeA for ## sats
- Sent ## sats to cold storage via Boltz.exchange
- Opened a channel with NodeB for ## sats
- Opened a channel with NodeC for ## sats
- Sent ## sats to LightningWalletA
etc.
Just fill in what you can remember in your steps, and estimate the amounts since you probably won’t have the exact amounts memorized (just give ballpark figures to build up the picture of what state you had moved your node into prior to the backup).