Closing dead node

Support and Troubleshooting
1

@mayank

installed umbrel on linux.
at about 60% sync lightning channel showed green light
sent 250000 sat from my btc lightning wallet to lightning address given by the three dots next to lightning network. immediately after sending it showed the capacity of 248000 sat.

then the os crashed and i installed another os on the laptop. i restarted umbrel using the 24 secret words and even the same password. it started syncing again but the lightning address given by the three dots is different now. it does not show the sent funds.

the lightning wallet on the phone said refundable 248000 sat. it showed the deposit. i clicked on close channel to the wallet and it said shutting down. it shows 0 deposit now but it is not refunding anything.

who has my 248000 sat and how do i get it back?

thanks
fred

2

First of all, seems that you start running a node without reading and learning anything about how LN works or at least how a LN node have to be managed. That’s the biggest mistake all new users are doing.

We’ve posted a lot of guides, right here on this forum, in the Guides section, for you guys, to read them, BEFORE start playing around with funds. But seems that many do not have that patience to read. It would save you a lot of trouble if you read first.

A lot of links to documentation and tutorials were posted just to give you, as a new user, more info and knowledge about what are you going to do and learn more about LN. With even more video tutorials here.

A MUST start guide is also this one dedicated to new users: Getting started with Umbrel, where is explained step by step what should do a new Umbrel user.

A dedicated troubleshooting guide for Umbrel users to debug and diagnose issues they have BEFORE doing any stupid things.

A special guide about how to recover your funds from a dead node, in 8 ways, depending on each situation you are.

So, to recap what you did…(as far I can understand from your confusing post).

  1. you didn’t wait for the node to be 100% synced and also totally ready to open LN channels. WRONG
  2. you send from another LN wallet to your “lightning address”. WRONG. That is your nodeURI not an address where to send sats. Is not even possible to send sats to that address, your wallet will simply say is not a valid LN invoice. So this part seems to be fake or you are not saying all you did.
  3. So your OS crashed (ok, shit happen all the time), but you restored with the seed and you didn’t mentioned if you also used the channels.backup file. So again… WRONG, if you had someway funds in LN channels, without that backup, is impossible to recover your funds.
  4. What LN wallet on the phone you are talking about? If your node was dead, how that you still have shown funds in that wallet app? If the node is dead, you will not be able to see anything in any app on the phone (if was connected to your node).
  5. Who has your funds? You and only you can have them, but if you do not have the right wallet open, then you will never see them.

So please explain more, because the whole story doesn’t add up.

3

you can find it in /home/umbrel/umbrel/lnd/data/chain/bitcoin/mainnet/channel.backup or you can request a copy from Umbrel devs (@mayank or @lukechilds or …)
developers:
as the drive is a ssd in the laptop and a new os was installed, please send me the backup file
the old and new node address: 02d935fc732…
248.990 sat sent on april 16
to this node
it said lightning channel funding
txtid: f7c274906ac64843c2c31756c57…

thanks

4

please remove that onion address from your post.
NEVER post that on a public forum and nowhere else that can be used. Is a private information

5

did you send the copy?

6

hi,
my funds are still not back in my wallet from where i sent them
i asked on nostr and usernameisjim told me to reinstall it and use the automatic backup which i did.
it was confirmed by a green field that the cannels will close and my funds will be back in the onchain wallet.
i saw your note that ‘if you do not wait for the funds to go back to your onchain wallet before you close the wallet you will break this shit… you write’

i was not even asked if i wanted to close the channel. it told me the channel is closing. i assumed that i have closed it from the sending wallet. but there it is on a loop for one year now.

what information do you need from me?
thanks
fred