Lightning Channel error when chaning BTC node implementation

StartOS Support
1

Hi Team

I recently changed my BTC node to a Knots node from BTC core. I had a LND node running with a 1 channel. When the Knots node finished syncing I noticed the lightning channel had disappeared.

Ive been in contact with the Lightning Labs support team and no channels pending or otherwise are being detected by the node and the channel back up file is not there either.

Ive been asked by the Lightning team to reach out and see if this have ever happened before? Are you guys aware of something like this happening?

Regards
L

2

Scammer in your support community

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3

Hi there.

To confirm. You swapped your Bitcoin Node from Bitcoin Core to Knots while you had an open lightning channel?

Did you do a backup of your Server before you did the swap by any chance?

4

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

5

Yeah that’s correct. I did not back up before the switching the node. I had an older back up that was done before the channel was opened.

6

This is the first I’ve heard of a case like yours, but by doing some research I have come across an article from the umbrel support team where they warn against doing exaclty what you have done as it could cause some serious problems.

According to the people in that post:

If You have a working setup of Bitcoin Core + apps that depend on it You will have to use the command line to replace Bitcoin Core with Knots, as outlined in the docs, section if you already have a node.

They further note Replacing Core with Knots on a running setup is scary to be honest and if something goes wrong, you will have a bad time.

Please note that this is not an offical comment by Start9 but what I have found on the internet while searching for a solution to your problem. What is detailed by them might not work on a Start9 server as Umbrel is different.

If any other community members have more to add I’m sure they will do so.

7

You might want to have a look at your LND Logs (Services -> LND -> Logs) to see if there is any record of the channel open, or if there are any errors in there.

8

Hey OKIN went through an extensive process with the LND devs. Funds have been recovered. Here is a breakdown of what happened.

Intention was to move from Core BTC node to Knots node:

  1. Uninstalled BTC Core
  2. Installed Knots and synced node
  3. Saw LND was working but when using Lightning terminal multiple “Could not retrieve” errors where shown and channel was missing.
  4. Set up a new VM and restored the previous BTC and LND implementations from a Start9 backup. I see now this back up was taken before the channel was opened.
  5. On New setup terminal still showing errors and no luck with channel.
  6. Uninstalled Knots on the original machine and reinstalled BTC Core.
  7. Synced BTC core node
  8. Tried the LND again but same errors and channel was still gone.

From what the LND devs can tell uninstalling the core node wiped the channel and history from the node. I did not have a recent backup and was unable to use channel.backup file to restore the channel. (My bad)

Had to use chantools to force close the channel and sweep the funds .

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