Topic: The Lightning Network FAQ - page 33. (Read 33677 times)

I have a Argon One m.2 sitting on my desk running a node in a box (raspiblitz)

The Apollo is good, but keep in mind that it's a custom build, so unless something has changed in the last few weeks, you can't just update it, you have to wait for futurebit to release an OS / whatever update. And it's only a 512 GB drive so not a lot of room there for other stuff once you have the full node running.

Remember that the m.2 for the argon is SATA NOT NVMe for the m.2 slot so you have a much smaller choice of what drives you can use. AND the ssd m.2 are getting harder to find.

-Dave

It's not just the processing power. Everything is nowadays written for RPi 4. So with $20 extra, you're also included into implementations of projects that have more support. I could have an issue with my RPi 3, but if you've never used it, you'll just recommend me to buy the latest Pi.

Running a full node on a RPi does, indeed, have this downside. 

I wanted to try some different implementations of Bitcoin node OS, but they'll all take around 2-3 months to complete...

Wow, I knew that each consecutive Pi added a bit more power, but never checked the numbers, and indeed the jump from 3 to 4 is insane!
I always had the issue though, that I bought a Raspberry Pi shortly before the new one came out, so I'm stuck with a 3B+ for almost as long as the model 4 exists.. Ugh. Now I don't want to make the same mistake again and buy a model 4 now if maybe next month a 5 comes out lol.

Anyway, my Bitcoin stuff just runs on an older Intel platform, which is probably still faster than a Pi model 4 (though of course much higher power consumption) and I already had it, so it was 'free'. Also easier to work with in general, e.g. apt updates take forever on Pis (at least anything up to including 3B+).

A Pi is though much more compact and easier to tuck away, I was thinking of still getting a model 4 with the Argon One m.2 case (https://thepihut.com/products/argon-one-m-2-raspberry-pi-4-case). However, I'm hopefully getting my Futurebit Apollo soon whose SBC should have even more power than a Raspi, and will try to install Lightning onto that. Would also be a nice compact solution and having a compact full node with LN and a hashboard would be really sick, let's see how it will work out

I cannot stress this enough, get away from the RPi3 in general at this point to do bitcoin stuff.
It will work, but the RPi4 is just a better unit for not much more money.

Since they say a picture is worth 1000 words and I am too lazy to type, the following image from https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-vs-raspberry-pi-3b-plus
puts in out there perfectly:



All that extra processing power for $20.00 more.
I know that due to the current shortages prices are all over the place, but you can still here in the US get a 4 with 4GB for $50 delivered give or take a few dollars.
A year / 18 months ago it was a different story. Now, just get the 4 IMO.

-Dave

I have no RPi expience, but on my laptop it works well to put blocks on HDD and chainstate on SSD.

The above adjustment made restarting Bitcoin Core much faster. But it wasn't anywhere close to days, just minutes.

I have no idea if this was discussed yet since this thread is damn long, but I would like to mention that I tried c-lightning with a pruned node, since it was mentioned everywhere that it should be possible, then ran into issues. When asking in the community, I was told that indeed those issues were due to me running Bitcoin Core pruned, so I had to go back to square 1 and restart Bitcoin Core in non-pruned mode.

Also PSA for newbies: Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ with a (fast) USB 3.0 HDD takes literal weeks to sync and verify the whole blockchain. Either have a real desktop (maybe also laptop with enough umph) Linux PC with which you can do the initial sync, then plug the drive into the Pi. Or use an SSD. Just wanting to prevent tons of headache

Especially since in case of an issue with the HDD (give it external power!!), when Bitcoin Core has to restart, it has to re-verify a ton of blocks which can easily add a day or two for each crash that you experience.

The issue is that for my last Lightning project, I needed a HTTPS API, and the one I found for c-lightning was c-lightning-REST, written in NodeJS. Maybe I'll code my own in C, but neever enough time. Argh. 

there are (were?) unknown bugs causing lnd to be resource heavy. In principle, it should be as low impact as a lightning client written in C, but not at all in practice

I don't know if the bugs are in the Go runtime/compiler, or in LND itself. When I wrote that comment, neither did anyone at lightning labs
 


actual rust-lightning is not production-ready last I heard.


I don't really get your issue about the language/dependencies for c-lightning plugins; just don't use any plugin you don't like?

Thanks a lot, ndalliard! A poll would be fun, just to get a general idea I had the same impression of a larger lnd user base though.

Yep, that's true, I really like how the implementation teams work together, also joined a "Lightning Specification Meeting" once to see how it's like, very interesting. And surely, diversity helps. But to me, right now, c-lightning (unintuitively) seems less clean than lnd. This might change once I try it, so I'll do that as soon as I find the time, while keeping my existing node up for the time being...

Yeah, that makes sense, however I would have much preferred all plugins to be in C. I mean that's kind of the reason various implementations exist, imagine the next c-lightning plugin to be coded in Go - that would be quite ironic wouldn't it
I myself like Python quite a lot, but wouldn't write a c-lightning plugin in it for sure. Unfortunately one plugin I needed was only available as a NodeJS implementation and that really sucks, I even have to start it manually after a reboot for example due to node (or I did something wrong, no time for further investigation so far).
Like, let's be honest: NodeJS is more bloat than the whole of lnd, so there's no real point of c-lightning if you need a single node plugin for it.

Oh, that's very good to know! My node is based on a repurposed laptop motherboard, the Pi synched way too slowly for my liking and I had it sitting around.. But keeping it in mind! Since I might instead of replacing my old node, instead deploy a second on a Pi....

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Came here via link from @Rath_, thanks for your insight! I'm now wondering: if lnd is so resource-heavy and Google-based, what about the rust implementation? Rust is supposed to be a c-alternative ("you can write bootloaders in Rust") etc., and focuses more on being resource friendly, as far as I know. Any opinions and experiences in this thread here? As far as I know it's kind of a "Lightning Core" and something is needed around it to have an actual node, didn't look much deeper into it yet though.

welcome n0nce to the c-lightning users, i am one too. if you mean here in the forum i am not sure, we maybe could make a poll for that at one point, but in general lnd seems to be used a lot more and has also the bigger community it seems

pretty much the reasons i also went with c-lightning

also especially because it seems that everyone is using lnd i went with c-lightning, cause i think it is important to have some diversity. i also see that on developer calls, that the 3 (or 4 if you count the rust implementation) implementations help each other to find bugs and be compliant with the rfcs. i just went with the minority (and not eclair cause that is written in java/scala which sounds bloat to me)

because the community / number of developers around c-lightning is much smaller than for lnd, some plugins are rotting away, but i like the fact, that a developer is free to choose his prefered language to write a plugin and is not forced to use go for it. i agree with you, i try to avoid nodejs and i am even hesitant using python in some cases (that might be a little bit extreme on my part)

rath_ switched from lnd to c-lightning - i asked him the following:

i am happy with c-lightning atm and don't feel like switching

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i stumbled the other day about this github issue for lnd. it seems that lnd doesn't run on 32 bit systems, after the size of the database gets bigger than 1 gb. and the last commenter there mentions that raspbian (used on raspberrypies) is a 32 bit system) - something to keep in mind when you run lightning on a rpi

Hey LN friends, I'm a c-lightning user for around half a year now, and I'm seriously debating about switching to lnd instead. What do you guys think is the cleaner solution? And what is the more commonly used implementation here?
I just hate hacked-together solutions and dirty code, since those are precursors of failed projects in 5-10 years time max.

I personally much prefer C over Go, and I hate Docker. Additionally, I noticed c-lightning was structured in a more minimalistic way for core functinality, with plugins for additional functionalities like HTTPS API etc., whereas in lnd it's all built-in - this to me at first sounds like bloat! Which I also hate! So I naturally went with c-lightning.

However, after a while of using the node and interacting with it, I noticed the plugin interface isn't as clean and bloat-free as I hoped: some plugins require me to install Node JS , they're all written in tons of different languages and often totally unmaintained for years.

So now, I'm thinking to deploy a new node, running lnd and trying to install it without Docker, straight from source.
Interested to hear your opinions and experiences!

As is pretty much everything in LN. So, if we follow the rules by the book, I think we are kind of safe.
I opened a dual funded channel myself with _Rath and I have now my node setup to advertise my available liquidity.

Everything seems fine so far. And if there is no one to use and to be the ones finding bugs and problems, then, we will never evolve.

well, yeah. It's just new is all, any bugs are not currently obvious, but that doesn't mean there aren't bugs. Time helps to be sure(r).

rath and me used it to open a channel and i think he used it again with someone else. even though it is marked as experimental, i think it is save to use. at least i haven't heard of any problems so far

yes, a few people started talking about dual-funding in this thread a couple months back, some even used it to make channels (apparently)

it's still accessed using --experimental-features in c-lightning, so craeful craeful etc

Hello.

I just wanted to make this available here as I'm not sure many of us are aware of this recent feature in C-Lightning nodes.
This is about the experimental feature of dual funding channels and advertising liquidity to the network.
There are some instructions on how to setup it up and configurations needed.

Hope it captivates interest of more C-Lightning users and help the network to grow, even for a bit!

https://medium.com/blockstream/setting-up-liquidity-ads-in-c-lightning-54e4c59c091d

It’s actually not. Whether Zion becomes a success, or a failure, it development can be used as an illustration of what can be built on top of the Lightning Network. But I’m the stupid one, maybe you’re right, or maybe my stupid and the idea’s stupid negates the stupid. - x - = +.

Lighning keeps growing, https://twitter.com/BitcoinIsaiah/status/1429983900043038721

It's been like that for most of the time anyway.


Yes, they are. Relay is actually what you need if you want your node to be able to work with Sphinx Chat.

Lightning Network Observer might be the news thread you are looking for - but don't quote me on that 

oh, okay. when searching, i only came across this ln thread and couldn't find a separate ln thread for news
i ask then the mods (gmaxwell & achow101) to move my post then in the appropriate ln-news-thread - thanks