I’m having an issue with my LND node after migrating to a new machine. Here’s what I did and what happened:
I made a backup to a flash drive and restored all Start9 containers on the new machine (except for Bitcoin Knots, since it was already installed and fully synced).
After the restore, LND automatically closed the existing channels — which I understand is expected.
I then opened new channels with the same peers.
(Possibly related) — after the migration and the automatic channel closes, I may have started the old LND node again.
Two days later, I noticed that:
The ThunderHub interface no longer shows the channels.
The channels still appear as active on Amboss, but I can’t route any payments.
I asked two of the peers to close the channels from their side, but even after 144+ blocks, nothing changed.
In ThunderHub, the on-chain balance shows 0, though I still see previous transactions listed.
I also tried running “Reset wallet transactions” in LND Actions, but after resyncing, it still shows on-chain = 0.
Hi Welcome to the community. Thank you for the back explanation. Moving forward, let’s go slow. There’s a lot of moving parts here. It looks like your LND node is working, and responding, and still has open channels. One of the two nodes has a very similar name to yours. Is this a channel to another node you control? You currently have two channels, both which were opened 6 days ago. Does this all sound correct?
Hi @Rexter, thanks for assisting!
You’re right about all your guesses.
The other node with the similar name is my Core Lightning node, running on the same machine.
Two days ago, I asked satoshi-mall (the node owner) to close their channel with me. At that time, there were three channels. I expected this one to close and settle within 24 hours, but it actually took almost two days (when I wrote my previous post, it was still shown as open on Amboss). It’s now closed, and the owner got their sats on-chain. However, my on-chain balance is still 0.
Two days ago, I also triggered a channel close from my CL Node. The dot indicator has been yellow (pending status) since then, but the channel is still not closed.
Before closing any channels, I tried to send and receive a payment with the GREENSPORK node owner (expecting the payment to route through that channel). I tested both directions, but none of the payments went through.
On the StartOS services page, please verify that there are green dots next to Bitcoin, LND, and Thunderhub. Let me know of anything else on this page that indicates a possible problem.
Stop all services. Then restart your server. You can find restart under the system menu.
After the server comes back up, before you start anything, go to the Bitcoin Knots service page, click config. Without making any changes click save. Then start the service. Do the same for LND. Then also do this for Thunderhub. While you’re in there, make sure Thunderhub is pointed at LND, not CLN. After that, you can start any other services you want to run.
Wait for all your health-checks to turn green, and then connect to Thunderhub to see if anything has changed.
I’ve follow carefully all the steps,(stop the service, restart, re-config with the same settings, check for ThunderHub to use the LND, and start again),
however there is change.
In the ThunderHub I see 0 on-chana and lightning balance, 5 peers, no channels
and 7 on chain transactions total, These are the last ones
Hi @trepechov - there are large warnings in place telling you to never open channels on an instance of LND that has been restored from backup. This is a direct recommendation from Lightning Labs. We put a nice big warning in place when you do the restoration, at least one as big as we can within the design language of the StartOS UI.
If you bypass or ignore this warning, there’s a distinct possibility that you could lose your funds as channels aren’t properly recorded or recognized in this state.
If you’re a Start9 customer, we might be able to talk you though some of the options at Start9.me that Lightning Labs would probably recommend, but you might also want to talk to them yourself.
All hope is not lost though. Technically any funds from closed channels are sitting in addresses generated from the private key in LND. With some effort, it’s technically feasible to gain access to them again.