Plasterer breaks lightning node while naming alias

Bitcoin and Lightning
1

Hi, I’ve had my umbrel up and running for about two weeks, put some money on lightning and opened some channels. Tried to follow a tutorial on how to give my node an alias.

In the tutorial I exit the editor and enter cat umbrel/app-data/lightning/data/lnd/lnd/lnd.conf into the terminal and get “cat: umbrel/app-data/lightning/data/lnd/lnd/lnd.conf: No such file or directory”

my node is offline now. I don’t know what I did wrong. Is there a way to fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Tim

2

Hmm, the cat/concatenate should not have broken the node like this… it also looks like the directory you have an extra /lnd//lnd there…

Are you on Raspberry Pi 4 or Linux installation? Can you SSH into your node or reach it via the IP in your browser’s address bar instead?

I can further assist you over telegram if you’d like to message me there for more real-time assistance? My telegram profile is: https://t.me/usernameisJim

Here are also full instructions on changing your node alias,

To change your Lightning Node’s alias, we’ll need to SSH in and edit the lnd.conf file

If we are on version 0.5 or later use this command:
sudo nano umbrel/app-data/lightning/data/lnd/lnd.conf

You’ll then see the contents of your lnd.conf displayed.
You can use your arrow keys to navigate and write on a new line some below [Application Options]

Add the line:
alias=SOMENAME

Replacing SOMENAME with your desired Lightning Node Alias.

(Optional) set color=#ff0000 or any other hex color, on a new line, just below alias. find a nice color

As per the controls you can now use CTRL+X to exit the file, the ^ caret corresponds to the CTRL key for all the commands listed.

The command line will now ask you “Save modified buffer?”
You may type Y for yes, it will then ask you File Name to Write, just hit enter to proceed without changing the filename.

You may now restart your node, preferably from the UI by going System > Restart

You’ll see on your node apps your alias has been updated, for any public channels it may take ~2 days to aggregate the change across the network graph.

(As a disclaimer, be advised adding an alias comes with some tradeoffs of anonymity)

3

I really appreciate the help! I actually decided to just delete the app, reinstall and recover from seed phrase. I did channel recovery after that. I reset from the last time I know my node was online. I had all my sats back in about 10 hrs. Awesome!

My new question is, do the channels reopen automatically or do I do it manually?

Again, thank you for the time spent trying to help me. Happy New Year to you!

4

you need to use a backup for example to get the channels back alive.
so it’ manually

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5

So “channel recovery” just closes the channels and returns the sats? When it asked me to select the backup, I selected the last one I’ll know for sure was online. Then it closed the channels and returned the sats within 10 hrs. I thought it would reopen them automatically?

6

not sure how you recovered the channels but with Thunderhub app for example you get the full channels back if you use the channel backup.

cheers

7

Ok, I used the lightning node app on umbrel. There is a “recover channels” option in settings in the lighting app. It gives you a list of updates to choose from. Some of those choices, my node was definitely not online, but the one I chose to backup from was. Going to wait another day and if they don’t reopen automatically, I’ll go ahead and reopen them.

Thanks!

1 Like