Beginner’s Guide to ️⚡Lightning️⚡ on a Raspberry Pi

The RaspiBolt guide moved to https://raspibolt.org.

I like to tinker and build stuff myself. Recently I built my own Bitcoin / Lightning Node with a simple Raspberry Pi. It took several iterations to get it right and it taught me a lot. This is my attempt to share my learnings and encourage you to run a node yourself.

Why am I excited about Bitcoin and Lightning?

Bitcoin as a new technology is an incredibly interesting endeavor, especially because of its interdisciplinary nature. Bitcoin as sound money is going to have a major impact on economic principles and thus society as a whole. In my opinion, a solid, anti-fragile base layer for this future monetary network will be more important than the most novel feature of competing projects. Due to network effects, I can only see one major monetary blockchain — Bitcoin — evolving over time.

At the moment, Bitcoin is more of a store of value and not really suited for small everyday transactions. Due to limitations of the blockchain and the incredible growth of its usage, fees have risen and business models relying on cheap transactions are being priced out. This is fine. Truly decentralized blockchains are a scarce resource and cannot scale to accommodate all global transactions. The current scaling pains are a great motivator to build better technology to scale exponentially, as opposed to just making everything bigger for linear scaling.

This is where the Lightning Network comes in. As one of several new blockchain “extensions”, its promise is to accommodate nearly unlimited transactions, with instant confirmation, minimal fees and increased privacy. It sounds almost too good to be true, but in contrast to ubiquitous ICO with their own token, this technology is well researched, committed to the cypherpunk open-source ethos and leverages the solid underpinnings of Bitcoin.

To preserve the decentralized nature of this monetary system, I think it is important that everybody can run their own trustless Bitcoin node, preferably on cheap hardware like a Raspberry Pi.

This is why I set out to run my RaspiBolt and think that I have now — through numerous iterations — quite a good configuration, that I would like to share as my modest contribution to the community. I am not a system specialist, so please feel free to point out improvements in the comments.

Purpose

My aim is to set up a trustless Bitcoin Core and Lightning node that runs 24/7, is part of and supports the decentralization of the Lightning network by routing payments and can be used to send and receive personal payments using the command line interface.

This server is set up without graphical user interface and is used remotely using the Secure Shell (SSH) command line. In the future, this server should function as my personal backend for desktop and mobile wallets, but I haven’t found a good solution to this yet. So, command line it is for the moment.

Spoiler alert, this is the goal of this guide, simply buying a Blockaccino:

As all components of the Lightning network are still under development, this server is configured for the Bitcoin Testnet. The plan is to regularly update this guide until we hit the mainnet once there is an official and stable Eclair Lightning release available for that. A switch to the mainnet will be straightforward.

Target audience

This guide strives to give simple and foolproof instructions. But the goal is also to do everything ourselves, no shortcuts that involve trust in a 3rd party allowed. This makes this guide quite technical, but I try to make it as straightforward as possible and explain everything for you to gain a basic understanding of the how and why.

Also, please be aware that all Lightning implementations are still in alpha phase and bugs are to be expected. If you like to learn about Linux, Bitcoin and Lightning, this guide is for you.

If you want to learn more about Bitcoin and are curious about the inner workings of the Lightning Network, the following articles in Bitcoin Magazine offer a very good introduction:

What Is Bitcoin? - Bitcoin Magazine

Understanding the Lightning Network, Part 1: Building a Bidirectional Bitcoin Payment Channel

1) Hardware Requirements

The following components are necessary:

• Raspberry Pi: version 2 or 3
• Micro SD card: 8 GB or more, incl. adapter to your regular computer
• USB power adapter: 5V/1.2A (more ampere is fine) + Micro USB cable
• External hard disk: 500 GB or more with dedicated power supply

Raspberry Pi 3: a tiny computer for less than $40

I used a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, which is a bit faster than the Pi 2 and has built-in Wifi, and set it up with a 8 GB SD card. To run a Lightning node, the full Bitcoin blockchain must be stored locally, which is ~200 GB and growing. I bought a cheap hard disk enclosure and reused an old 500 GB hard disk that was lying around. I use two power adapters: an old 5v USB mobile phone charger with 1A, and the separate power supply of the hard disk enclosure, as the USB ports of the Raspberry Pi cannot provide enough power to run an external hard disk directly.

2) Write down your passwords

You will need several passwords and I find it easiest to write them all down in the beginning, instead of bumping into them throughout the guide. They should be unique and very secure, at least 12 characters in length. Do not use uncommon special characters, blanks or quotes (‘ or “).

xkcd: Password Strength

[ A ] User password for “pi”
[ B ] User password for “root”(can be the same as for “pi”)
[ C ] User password for “bitcoin”
[ D ] Bitcoin wallet password
[ E ] Bitcoin RPC password
[ F ] Eclair API password

Store a copy of your passwords somewhere safe (preferably in a password manager like KeePass or LastPast) and keep your original notes out of sight once your system is up and running.

3) Installing the operating system

The node runs headless, without keyboard or display, so the operating system Raspbian Stretch Lite is used. Download the Zip file and follow the installation guide on the Raspberry Pi website.

Download Raspbian for Raspberry Pi

Installing operating system images

Enable Secure Shell

As no direct interaction with the Pi is possible during the initial setup, the remote SSH connection needs to be enabled beforehand. After writing the image to the Micro SD card, create an empty file called “ssh” (without extension) on the main directory of the card, so SSH will be enabled from the start. The SD card can now be inserted into the Pi.

Prepare Wifi

If you want to avoid connecting a network cable when first starting the Pi, you can pre-configure the wireless settings:

• Create a file “wpa_supplicant.conf” on the MicroSD card with the following content:

country=[COUNTRY_CODE]
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
    ssid=[WIFI_SSID]
    psk=[WIFI_PASSWORD]
}

• Replace [COUNTRY_CODE] with the ISO2 code of your country (eg. US)
• Replace [WIFI_SSID] and [WIFI_PASSWORD] for your own WiFi.

Note: if you connect via network cable, you can also configure the Wifi later.

Start your Pi

For the initial setup, the Pi needs to be connected to the home network using a network cable (it can run on Wifi later). With the SD card inserted and a network cable plugged in, start the Pi by connecting it to the mobile phone charger using the Micro USB cable.

4) Connecting to the network

The node is starting and getting a new address from your home network. This address can change over time. To make the Pi reachable from the internet, we assign it a fixed address.

Accessing your router

The fixed address is configured in your network router: this can be the cable modem or the Wifi access point. So we first need to access the router. To find out its address,

• start the Command Prompt on a computer that is connected to your home network (in Windows, click on the Start Menu and type cmd directly or in the search box, and hit Enter)
• enter the command ipconfig(or ifconfig on Mac / Linux)
• look for “Default Gateway” and note the address (eg. “192.168.0.1")

👉 additional information: accessing your router.

Now open your web browser and access your router by entering the address, like a regular web address. You need so sign in, and now you can look up all network clients in your home network. One of these should be listed as “raspberrypi”, together with its address (eg. “192.168.0.240”).

Client list in my ASUS router

👉 don’t know your router password? Try routerpasswords.com.

⚠️ If your router still uses the initial password: change it!

Setting a fixed address

We now need to set the fixed (static) IP address for the Pi. Normally, you can find this setting under “DHCP server”. The manual address should be the same as the current address, just change the last part to a lower number (e.g. 192.168.0.240 → 192.168.0.20).

Static IP address assignment in my ASUS router

👉 need additional information? Google “[your router brand] configure static dhcp ip address”

Port Forwarding

Next, “Port Forwarding” needs to be configured. Different applications use different network ports, and the router needs to know to which internal network device the traffic of a specific port has to be directed. The port forwarding needs to be set up as follows:

👉 additional information: setting up port forwarding.

Save and apply these router settings, we will check them later. Disconnect the Pi from the power supply, wait a few seconds, and plug it in again. The node should now get the new fixed IP address.

5) Working on the Raspberry Pi

We are going to work in the command line of the Pi, entering commands and getting results back. To make it clear where a command begins, every command in this guide you need to enter starts with the $ sign. In the following example, just enter “ls -la” and press the enter/return key:

$ ls -la

When you enter commands, you can use the “Tab” key for autocompletion, eg. for commands, directories or filenames.

If you are using Windows and the PuTTY / KiTTY client, you can copy text from the shell by selecting it with your mouse (no need to click anything), and paste stuff at the cursor position with a right-click anywhere in the ssh window.

Connecting

Now it’s time to connect to the Pi via SSH and get to work. For that, a Secure Shell (SSH) client is needed. Install, start and connect:

• Windows: PuTTY (Website)
• Mac OS: built-in SSH client (see this article)
• Linux: just use the native command, eg. ssh pi@192.168.0.20
• Use the following SSH connection settings:
  - Host Name: the static address you set in the router, eg. 192.168.0.20
  - Port: 22

Accept the server authentication and log in with the username “pi” and password “raspberry”.

👉 additional information: using SSH with Raspberry Pi

Raspi-Config

You are now on the command line of your own Bitcoin node. First we finish the Pi configuration. Enter the following command:
$ sudo raspi-config

• First, with (1) change your password to your password [A].
• Next, choose Update (8) to get the latest configuration tool
• Network Options (2): you can give your node a cute name (like “RaspiBolt”) and configure your Wifi connection (Pi 3 only)
• Boot Options (3): choose “Desktop / CLI” → “Console”
• Localisation (4): set your timezone
• Advanced (7): run “Expand Filesystem” and set “Memory Split” to 16
• Exit by selecting <Finish>, and <No> as no reboot is necessary

Software update

It is important to keep the system up-to-date with security patches and application updates. The “Advanced Packaging Tool” (apt) makes this easy:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Do this regularly every few months to get security related updates.

Disabling Swap File

The usage of a swap file can degrade your SD card very quickly. Therefore, we will disable it completely.
$ sudo swapoff --all
$ sudo apt-get remove dphys-swapfile

Adding the service user “bitcoin”

Bitcoin Core will run in the background (as a daemon) and use the separate user “bitcoin” for security reasons. This user does not have admin rights and cannot change the system configuration.

• Enter the following command, set your password [C] and confirm all questions with the enter/return key.
  $ sudo adduser bitcoin
• And while you’re at it, change the password of the “root” admin user to your password [B].
  $ sudo passwd root

Mounting external hard disk

The external hard disk is attached to the file system and can be accessed as a regular folder (this is called “mounting”). The hard disk should be empty and formatted.

Now plug your hard disk into the running Pi, power the drive up and enter the following commands in the command line to identify the partition:

• Identify the partition and note the UUID at the left (eg. “12345678”) and the FSTYPE (eg. “exfat”, “ntfs”, “vfat”…)
  $ sudo lsblk -o UUID,NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,LABEL,MODEL
$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
• Open the file “/etc/fstab” in the Nano text editor
  $ sudo nano /etc/fstab
• For FSTYPE “ntfs”, add the following (one line), but use the “UUID” noted above, then use Ctrl+O to save, confirm with Enter and use Ctrl+X to exit
  UUID=12345678 /mnt/hdd ntfs defaults,auto,umask=002,gid=bitcoin,users,rw 0 0
• …or, for FSTYPE “ext4”, add the following:
  UUID=12345678 /mnt/hdd ext4 defaults 0 0
• Create the directory to add the hard disk and set the correct owner
  $ sudo mkdir /mnt/hdd
• Mount all drives, view mounted partitions. Is “/mnt/hdd” listed?
  $ sudo mount -a
$ df /mnt/hdd
• Navigate to the hard disk and create the directory for Bitcoin testnet.
  $ cd /mnt/hdd
$ sudo mkdir bitcoin_testnet
$ ls -l
• If this command gives you an error, chances are that your external hard disk is mounted as “read only”. Several readers had issues with that. This must be fixed before proceeding.
• Please note that we mounted using umask=002,gid=bitcoin, which gives only the user “bitcoin” write access. User “pi” can only read and must use sudo when writing to the disk.

👉 If your drive is “read-only”, let me know on reddit. As soon as I figure a way to provide an easy, generic approach, I’ll update this guide.

👉 additional information: external storage configuration

6) Hardening your Pi

The following steps need admin privileges and must be executed logged in as the user “pi”.

Enabling the Uncomplicated Firewall

The Pi will be visible from the internet and therefore needs to be secured against attacks. A firewall controls what traffic is permitted and closes possible security holes.

The line ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 … below assumes that the IP address of your Pi is something like 192.168.0.???, the ??? being any number from 0 to 255. If your IP address is 12.34.56.78, you must adapt this line to ufw allow from 12.34.56.0/24 ….

$ sudo apt-get install ufw
$ sudo su
$ ufw default deny incoming
$ ufw default allow outgoing
$ ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any port 22 comment 'allow SSH from local LAN'
$ ufw allow 9735 comment 'allow Lightning'
$ ufw allow 18333 comment 'allow Bitcoin testnet'
$ ufw reject 8333 comment 'deny Bitcoin mainnet'
$ ufw enable
$ systemctl enable ufw
$ ufw status
$ exit

👉 additional information: UFW Essentials

fail2ban

The SSH login to the Pi must be especially protected. The firewall blocks all login attempts from outside your network, but additional steps should be taken to prevent an attacker — maybe from inside your network — to just try out all possible password.

The first measure is to install “fail2ban”, a service that cuts off any system with five failed login attempts for ten minutes. This makes a brute-force attack unfeasible, as it would simply take too long.

Me locking myself out by entering wrong passwords 😉

$ sudo apt-get install fail2ban

The initial configuration should be fine as it is enabled for SSH by default. If you want to dive deeper, you can 👉 customize the configuration.

Login with SSH keys

One of the best options to secure the SSH login is to completely disable the password login and require a SSH key certificate. Only someone with physical possession of the private key can login.

👉 This is an advanced measure, but I think a must at least for the Bitcoin mainnet. If you would like to try, please find additional information on the follow-up Getting ready for ️Lightning on Bitcoin Mainnet.

7) Bitcoin Core

The base of the Lightning node is a fully trustless Bitcoin Core node. It downloads all blocks since the Bitcoin Genesis block to rebuild the complete blockchain, validates all blocks and creates an index with all transactions that ever happened. By doing all this work ourselves, nobody else needs to be trusted.

Installation

We will download the software manually from bitcoin.org and verify its signature to make sure we use an official release.

Bitcoin Core

• Create a download folder
  $ mkdir /home/pi/download
$ cd /home/pi/download

We download the latest Bitcoin Core binaries (the application) and compare the file with the signed checksum. This is a precaution to make sure that this is an official release and not a malicious version trying to steal our money.

• Check bitcoin.org/en/download for the current links, they change with each update. Then run the following adjusted commands and check the output where indicated (lines starting with # are comments):

$ wget https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.16.0/bitcoin-0.16.0-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
$ wget https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.16.0/SHA256SUMS.asc
$ wget https://bitcoin.org/laanwj-releases.asc
$ sha256sum --check SHA256SUMS.asc --ignore-missing
# check that the reference checksum matches the real checksum
# output: "bitcoin-0.16.0-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz: OK"
$ gpg ./laanwj-releases.asc
# manually check the fingerprint of the public key:
# 01EA5486DE18A882D4C2684590C8019E36C2E964
$ gpg --import ./laanwj-releases.asc
$ gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc
# import the public key and verify the signed checksum file
# output: "Good signature from Wladimir ..."
# check the fingerprint again in case of malicious keys 
# 01EA 5486 DE18 A882 D4C2  6845 90C8 019E 36C2 E964

• Extract the Bitcoin Core binaries, install them and check the version.

$ tar -xvf bitcoin-0.16.0-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
$ sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin bitcoin-0.16.0/bin/*
$ bitcoind --version
Bitcoin Core Daemon version v0.16.0

Configuration

We use the Bitcoin daemon, called “bitcoind”, that runs in the background without user interface and stores all data in a hidden subdirectory of the user’s home directory: /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin

• Change to user “bitcoin” and enter the password.
  $ sudo su bitcoin
• We add a symbolic link that points to the external hard disk.
  $ ln -s /mnt/hdd/bitcoin_testnet /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin
• Navigate to the home directory and check the symbolic link. The content of this directory will actually be on the external hard disk.
  $ cd
$ ls -la

• Now, the configuration file for bitcoind needs to be created.
  $ nano /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

You can copy the next block directly into your SSH client. In PuTTY, just click the right mouse button, in a terminal window in Linux or Mac it usually is Ctrl+Shift+V .

⚠️ Change rpcpassword to your secure password [E], otherwise your funds might get stolen.

👉 additional information: all arguments in Bitcoin Wiki

Autostart bitcoind

The system needs to run the bitcoin daemon automatically in the background, even when nobody is logged in. We use “systemd“, a daemon that controls the startup process using configuration files.

• Exit the “bitcoin” user session back to user “pi”
  $ exit
• Create the configuration file in the Nano text editor and copy the following paragraph.
  $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service

• Save Ctrl+O and exit Ctrl+X.
• Enable the configuration file
  $ sudo systemctl enable bitcoind.service
• Restart the Raspberry Pi
  $ sudo shutdown -r now

Verification of bitcoind operations

After rebooting, the bitcoind should start and begin to sync and validate the Bitcoin blockchain.

• Wait a bit, reconnect via SSH and login with the user “bitcoin”.
• The bitcoind started working in the “.bitcoin” folder. All data related to the Bitcoin testnet is stored in the subdirectory “testnet3”
  $ cd /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin
$ ls -l
$ cd testnet3
$ ls -l

• Check the status of the bitcoin daemon that was started by systemd
  (exit with Ctrl+C)
  $ systemctl status bitcoind.service

• You can also check the Bitcoin Core logfile and see the bitcoind in action (exit with Ctrl+C)
$ tail -f /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/testnet3/debug.log
• Use the Bitcoin Core client “bitcoin-cli” to get the current progress of the blockchain validation.
  $ bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo
Note: only the user “bitcoin” can use “bitcoin-cli”!
• When “bitcoind” is still starting, you may get an error message like “verifying blocks”. That’s normal, just give it a few minutes.
• Among other infos, the “verificationprogress” is shown. Once this value reaches 1 (or 0.99999…), the blockchain is up-to-date and fully validated.

The validation of the testnet blockchain will take several hours, mainnet would take more more than a week. This is why I’ll provide a guide on how to download and verify the main blockchain on a regular computer and then copy it to the Pi.

Create your bitcoin wallet

Personally, I keep only a small amount of bitcoin in a wallet that is connected to the internet, like change in a purse. Most bitcoin is in cold storage, where using a hardware wallet is a very convenient but secure solution. That said, never put more bitcoin than necessary in the wallet on the Pi.

👉 Check out Ledger and Trezor for highly recommended hardware wallets.

At the moment, we are just dealing with worthless testnet bitcoin, but the goal is to go onto mainnet as soon as the Lightning network is ready. So we secure the wallet just the same:

• Your wallet has already been created by Bitcoin Core. First get some info about it, encrypt it with your strong password [D] and then unlock it for a certain number of seconds (eg. 600 for 10 minutes):
  $ bitcoin-cli getwalletinfo
$ bitcoin-cli encryptwallet PASSWORD_[D]
$ bitcoin-cli walletpassphrase PASSWORD_[D] 600
• Now, we create a backup of the wallet and restore it. If your wallet is locked, you need to unlock it (with walletpassphrase)before restoring it.
  $ bitcoin-cli backupwallet /mnt/hdd/wallet_testnet.backup
$ bitcoin-cli importwallet /mnt/hdd/wallet_testnet.backup
• Store a backup copy of the “wallet.backup” file somewhere save. After the initial sync, you can shut down the Pi, connect the hard disk to your desktop computer and copy the backup file. As long as you used a really strong password, the backup file reveals no sensitive information.

Get some testcoins

Want to get “testnet” rich? Let’s create a Bitcoin address and get some testnet Bitcoins from a faucet.

• Generate a new bitcoin address and copy it to your desktop’s clipboard (in PuTTY, just double click on it)
  $ bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
• On your desktop computer, go to the following website, paste the address and get some coins!
  https://testnet.manu.backend.hamburg/faucet
• Check your wallet balance: you should see the incoming coins in “unconfirmed balance”.
  $ bitcoin-cli getwalletinfo
• Wait until your coins are shown in “balance” before proceeding. This means that your incoming transaction is now confirmed by a miner and written to the blockchain.

Bitcoin wallet preparation for Lightning

On testnet, the funds in your Bitcoin Core wallet need to be held in a special address type. We create such an address and transfer the whole balance of your wallet.

• Check your balance: you get the amount of test bitcoin [A]
  $ bitcoin-cli getbalance
• Unlock your wallet and generate a new bitcoin address [B]
  $ bitcoin-cli walletpassphrase PASSWORD_[D] 600
$ bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
• Import this new address [B] as a witness address [C]
  $ bitcoin-cli addwitnessaddress ADDRESS_[B]
• Create a new Bitcoin transaction that sends your balance [A] to the new witness address [C]. You get the transaction id [D].
  $ bitcoin-cli sendtoaddress WITNESSADDR_[C] BALANCE_[A] "" "" true

• To check the transaction, look the transaction id [D] up in a Bitcoin Testnet Blockchain Explorer.

After some time, a bitcoin miner will pick up the transaction and add it to a new block.

Explore bitcoin-cli

If everything seems to run smoothly, and now you have some bitcoin to use, this is the perfect time to familiarize yourself with Bitcoin Core and play around with bitcoin-cli until the blockchain is up-to-date.

A great point to start is the book “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonopoulos — which is open source — and in this regard especially chapter 3 (ignore the first part how to compile from source code).

bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook

👉 additional information: bitcoin-cli reference

Once the blockchain is synced, the Lightning node can be set up.

8) Lightning Network

This Pi uses the Acinq Eclair Lightning node. The reason for choosing Eclair is that it runs in the Java virtual machine and must not be compiled especially for the Raspberry Pi. The source code is very clean and support is great. Still, it’s Alpha software and bugs are to be expected.

⚡️ From here on, this guide is still being refined. I plan to update this documentation regularly until we hit Bitcoin mainnet. ⚡️

ACINQ/eclair

Installation

• Log in as “pi”, as only this user has admin rights. First, we install Java and JQ and check if the program runs correctly.
  $ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-jdk
$ sudo apt-get install jq
$ java -version
  
  If you use this guide for a different platform and “oracle-java8-jdk” is not available, make sure to use “openjdk-8-jre”
• If you upgrade from a previous version of Eclair, stop the service and remove the old files first.
  $ sudo systemctl stop eclair.service
$ rm -rf /home/bitcoin/eclair
• Switch to user “bitcoin”
  $ sudo su bitcoin
• Now, download the binary files from GitHub. Please check the Releases page for current download links.
$ mkdir /home/bitcoin/eclair
$ cd /home/bitcoin/eclair
$ wget https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair/releases/download/v0.2-alpha10/eclair-node-0.2-alpha10-0beca13.jar
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ACINQ/eclair/v0.2-alpha10/eclair-core/eclair-cli
$ ln -s eclair-node-0.2-alpha10-0beca13.jar eclair-node.jar
$ ls -l

• The “eclair-cli” client script needs to be installed.
$ cd
$ mkdir bin
$ cp eclair/eclair-cli bin/
$ chmod +x bin/eclair-cli
• Open the file “.bashrc” in Nano.
  $ nano /home/bitcoin/.bashrc
• Add the following line at the end, save and exit (see above examples).
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

• For convenience, we add password [F] to the client script. Save & exit.
$ source /home/bitcoin/.bashrc
$ nano bin/eclair-cli

• The working directory “.eclair” will also link to the external hard disk
  $ cd /home/bitcoin/
$ mkdir /mnt/hdd/eclair
$ ln -s /mnt/hdd/eclair /home/bitcoin/.eclair
$ ls -la

Configuration

Make sure to be logged in as user “pi”, if you are still using “bitcoin”, type
$ exit to get back to your original session.

Create the eclair configuration file with the following content.
$ sudo nano /home/bitcoin/.eclair/eclair.conf

• Replace YOURNAME with any public alias you like (I use Stadicus).
• Enter the two passwords where suggested. The passwords must be be enclosed by double quotes (“…”) and should not contain quotes or spaces.
• Make sure that the rpcuser and rpcpassword in “bitcoin.conf” and “eclair.conf” match exactly, otherwise Eclair will fail on startup.
• If you want people to connect to your node, remove the # in front of “eclair.server.public-ips” and enter your real IP address.
• Save and exit.

The Eclair Lightning node will also run as a daemon, started by systemd, but only after “bitcoind.service” has been started.

• Create the configuration file in the Nano text editor and copy the following paragraph. Save and exit.
  $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/eclair.service

• Enable the configuration file
  $ sudo systemctl enable eclair.service
$ sudo systemctl start eclair.service
$ sudo systemctl status eclair.service

You can observe the operations of Eclair by streaming the log file.
$ tail -f /home/bitcoin/.eclair/eclair.log

9) Using you Lightning Node

You are now all set to interact with your Lightning Node! Use eclair-cli to query your node, open channels and make payments.

The following screens describe how to kickstart your node from the first connection to the first payment. To open a channel, go to the Lightning Network Explorer and just pick a node with a public IP address, copy the URI and use with the “connect” command.

Please note, that the “connect” commands needs the URI (NodeID@IP:Port), while the “open” command needs just the NodeID.

And as you need to spend some bitcoin to open a channel, you need to unlock your Bitcoin Core wallet first! There is no clear error message if it’s locked.

Commands to kickstart your Lightning node

Make sure that you are using user “bitcoin” for the following commands.

$ bitcoin-cli getwalletinfo
$ bitcoin-cli walletpassphrase JkUX....................xcXe 600
$ eclair-cli getinfo
$ eclair-cli connect 02d2cc8507...8da3e43ba1@71.14.230.82:9735
$ eclair-cli open 02d2cc8507...8da3e43ba1 1000000 0
$ eclair-cli channels
$ eclair-cli channel 212cef8550a326489c1...2d3c52b5d363fa64db8

Expect the “connect” command to fail quite often, as many listed nodes are offline and cannot accept the request. Repeat the channel creation to open a few channels.

Feel free to connect to my node!

The funds to open the channel are now transmitted on the Bitcoin blockchain and need to be confirmed by miners. This can take up to 2 hours.

After the channel has reached the status “Normal”, you can try and spend some coins on Y’alls or Starblocks with $ eclair-cli send [PaymentReq].

Et voilà, your freshly brewed Blockaccino!

👉 additional information: Eclair API reference

Next steps

You can already start to prepare for the switch to mainnet (whenever that will be) by downloading and validating the Bitcoin blockchain on your regular computer. See this follow-up guide for further directions:

Getting ready for ⚡️Lightning⚡️ on Bitcoin Mainnet

Further reading

• Ultimate collection of Bitcoin resources by Jameson Lopp
• Acinq Eclair Readme on Github
• Bitcoin Full Node on RBP3, by Damian Mee

So this is it! Did you like my guide? Do you have questions or improvments proposals? Let me know in the comments, on reddit or on Twitter (@Stadicus3000)!