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Swiss Routing

Core Lightning Tips

Tips and tricks to configure Core Lightning (CLN) for optimal performance.

Table Of Contents

  1. Config File
    1. Config File Location
  2. Uptime Monitoring With Amboss
    1. Cron Configuration
    2. Amboss Configuration
  3. Hybrid Mode
    1. What Is Hybrid Mode?
    2. How To Enable/Disable
    3. Configuration Sample

Config File

See lightningd docs for more details.

Config File Location

On the RaspiBlitz you can find the CLN config file under the bitcoin user’s home directory.

/home/bitcoin/.lightning/config

Uptime Monitoring With Amboss

Amboss provides a health check service for Lightning nodes. This can be used to monitor the uptime of your node and even display the information publicly if desired.

Cron Configuration

You can use this shell script for CLN or this shell script for LND on your node to send a properly formed health check ping to Amboss.

  1. Save shell script (e.g. /home/bitcoin/amboss-ping.sh)
  2. Run crontab -e to edit your cron configuration
  3. Add a line like this to run the job every minute:
* * * * * /home/bitcoin/amboss-ping.sh

Note: cron scripts do not run with the same environment as interactive shells. This means you might encounter problems when running this script as a cron job. If necessary you can try tweaking the line as follows to instruct bash to use an interactive (login) shell with full user customizations active:

* * * * * bash -l /home/bitcoin/amboss-ping.sh

Amboss Configuration

No special configuration is needed on Amboss to enable this functionality.

You can view health checks for your node at: https://amboss.space/node/NODE_ID/health

You can configure the health check interval and whether the results are publicly visible at: https://amboss.space/owner?page=monitoring

Hybrid Mode

What Is Hybrid Mode?

“Hybrid” mode is a terminology popularized by LND but the same concept can apply to CLN.

This simply means that outgoing connections to Tor nodes are routed through the Tor proxy, while outgoing connections to clearnet nodes are routed directly over the normal “clearnet” network.

How To Enable/Disable

Hybrid mode in CLN is controlled using the option always-use-proxy.

To enable hybrid mode, add this line to your config file:

# Note: this is also the default setting if unspecified
always-use-proxy=false

To disable hybrid mode (and route all traffic through Tor proxy), change it to:

always-use-proxy=true

Configuration Sample

My config file looks something like:

# TOR
addr=statictor:127.0.0.1:9051/torport=9735
proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
always-use-proxy=false

# CLEARNET
bind-addr=0.0.0.0:<ClearnetPort>
announce-addr=<ClearnetIp>:<ClearnetPort>