bitcoind, c-lightning and RTL on centos 7 (walktrough)

I decided to write down some documentation on how to rebuild some of my services in case i ever faced a system crash, and because i more or less had all documentation on my system, i decided to update everything and publish it on this forum AND my blog... This way everybody could use my documentation to setup their own services of they ever wanted to.

some remaks:

• I'm not taking any political stance here... The lightning network has pro's and con's, it's not completely mature (yet). This thread is NOT for discussing LN merits or shortcomings, but merely a technical walk-trough on how to get things up and running
• my system specs: Centos 7, KVM VPS, 3 Gb RAM, 3vCPU's... The most important spec, however, is the disksize... A full node requires 278G at this moment, and there is a (theoritical) growth potential of ~17 Gb/month. Add some space for binaries, updates, builds, logs,... So you'll need at very least 350 Gb of free space on your filesystem
• not all VPS providers will deliver a VPS that has the same configuration... It's possible some prereqs were already met in my basic image, while you have to install them yourself (or vice-versa)
• i didn't document the firewall rules, because there are several possible firewall-implementations, and basically, if i'd have to go into the details of setting up firewallrules, i'd need a completely seperate firewall tutorial alltogether. If you have a clean (unused) VPS or you're installing a server in your HOME network (behind your own firewall), you *might* want to disable the firewall for testing puposes (re-enable it afterwards tough!!!)
• i didn't document the backup procedures. Always make sure you backup wallets, seeds,...
• no guarantee... If you follow these steps and lose money: don't blame me
• no help... Sure, i might try to help you out if you run into problems, but i'm under no obligation to do so. Best effort only, and only when i have time to help you
• no docker. Sure, docker is great, but if you run docker containers, you'll never know what's under the hood . It's easy to download and spin up a docker container, but you'll learn little (or nothing). Don't get me wrong, if you're building your own containers or if you don't want to learn how to setup your service, docker is great... Just not if you want to get your hands dirty
  
• bitcoin core, c-lightning and RTL are built from source in this walktrough... It's up to you to periodically perform updates (not only for these binaries, but for all packages on your system)
• this tutorial is a work in progress... There are many other steps (hardening, cleanup,...) that could happen. I'll probably edit these steps when i get input, or when i think about something myself. This is also why i split up this thread, this way every step has the chance/space to grow in the future...

Overview Of what we'll be installing
Bitcoin Core: a full node implementation and wallet, sometimes called the reference client. This node fetches all blocks and unconfirmed transactions from the peers it's connected to, parses and verifies everything and has a full wallet functionality
C-lightning: a Lightning Network implementation in C. Create lightning channels, create or pay lightning invoices.
RTL: Ride the lightning: one of the best GUI's that can be used on top of an existing c-lightning daemon. No extra functionality, but a lot easyer to use than using lightning-cli

~12€ worth of BTC for 10 minutes of my time... Sure... As long as following requirements are met:

• I'm payed upfront, or an escrow i trust is being used
• You promised no identifying information... As soon as you ask identifying information (including but not limited to: exact balances, addresses, country, name, exact age,...) i'm walking away and keeping the funds for my troubles
• You realise i'm holding some crypto, I have a technical background, but i'm not a trader... I can't answer any questions i know nothing about
• I won't hold a voice/video call, no insecure clients, no chat clients on your own website, no clients that need KYC to use (including those phone messengers that need to verify your phonenumber),... So basically: send me the questions via mail and i'll type out the answers and reply afterwards

It's friday afternoon, it's 14:20. I get off work at 16:00. If you're interested, set everything up before 15:40 and you'll have your answers before 16:00

Well, there are different trains of tought on the best option... Mixing is defenately the easyest option of the 3... But you'll need to put your trust in the mixing service... If i'm not mistaking Theymos (The admin) isn't a big fan of mixing services for this very reason... What if the mixer is a scam or a honeypot? What if they made mistakes in their security protocol, what if their servers get seized?
But, if you trust them, a mixer is a cheap and fast method

The 3th option isn't that hard either:

You controll unspent outputs funding your address, let's call it 1BtcAddressA. At this point, you go to an (on-the-fly) exchange and exchange your BTC to (for example) XMR (or ZEC or Verge or...). You create an XMR  wallet on your hardware wallet (or desktop wallet) and withdraw the XMR to your local wallet (you now have an unspent output on the XMR network funding address 4XmrAddressB). Since this is a high anonimity coin, only the exchange knows they funded 4XmrAddressB. Now, you either create a second new XMR wallet (or a new address within the same wallet if you trust yourself not to start mixing unspent outputs) and you use the unspent output funding 4XmrAddressB to fund 4XmrAddressC. At this point, the link is completely broken.
Now, you use a different exchange to exchange the unspent outputs funding 4XmrAddressC on the XMR network for an unspent output on the bitcoin network funding a brand new address on a new wallet (1BtcAddressD).

At this point the link is completely broken. If you're paranoid, you can perform these steps over Tor and VPN, or you can mix several methods just to be sure...

Edit: it's friday, i'm bored, i added a visual aid... Copyright: Me 

yes

yes

beginner level... You don't even need to know the technical details. The only thing one needs is the ability to follow a very simple input/output trail (or give a couple bucks to one of the many companies that specialise in this) and the power to ask the exchanges you used for the KYC documentation you provided (aka get a court order). Altough, with the security flaws in many of the exchanges, you might not even need the power to ask an exchange for KYC documents, sometimes exchanges are so vulnerable they get hacked and your private information is sold for pennies on the darknet...


Your coins exist as simple unspent outputs funding addresses you created (or that were created by an online service, altough i discourage storing funds on exchanges or online wallets). They're not physical things. You cannot regain pseudo-anonimity if you want to keep the exact same unspent outputs funding the exact same addresses. BUT: an unspent output x with value y funding address z is worth exactly the same as unspent output a with value y funding address b on the same chain.

If you're fine with this concept, you can create a brand new wallet (i prefer a hardware wallet or properly generated paper wallet, but a TRUSTED desktop wallet on a CLEAN PC might work aswell if you don't have enough funds). Then, you can use a mixer, a coinjoin wallet, or exchange your "traceable" coins to a high anonimity currency and back to BTC.

Basically:
"traceable unspent outputs" => mixer => "output from mixer funding brand new address from brand new wallet"
or
"traceable unspent outputs" => coinjoin wallet => coinjoin => "output from coinjoin funding brand new address from brand new wallet (or just keep using the coinjoin wallet)"
or
"traceable unspent outputs" => exchange => high anonimity coin => exchange => "output from exchange funding brand new address from brand new wallet"

1 - mocacinno

Wow, it has been a while since i was last able to participate... I usually notice the thread once all slots have been filled
Thanks for the entertainment btw

So, i assume you're either the owner or getting payed by the owner of this wallet, right?

Since there is an online version, is it safe to conclude this is a custodial wallet? If so, the service is in controll of the keys (not the user), so they're the ones in control of the funds... So if it's a custodial wallet, it's actually an exchange disguised as a wallet?

Personally, i wouldn't use a new, unknown wallet... Especially if i have doubts wether the wallet service has access to my private keys. I'd stick to hardware wallets, or at the very least open source wallets that have been community vetted and have a long (positive) history in the community.

EDIT: I just noticed CLOUDFLARE SSL... Really??? A MITM for a potentially custodial wallet service... If your funds get stolen you won't even be able to prove it was the wallet service, it might aswell be a cloudflare employee... A red flag in my book...

Electrum uses a gap limit. When they detect an address is being funded, it makes sure it derives and monitors the next (gap limit) addresses aswell.

For example, if the gap limit is 50, a new wallet only contains unfunded addresses, so electrum will derive and monitor transactions for the first 50 addresses.
If the first address gets funded, electrum will derive and monitor the first 51 addresses.
If you manually pick and send the 10th address and it gets funded, electrum will derive and monitor the first 61 addresses.

If you create a wallet, change the gap limit to 100, manually pick the 99th address and it gets funded, then decrease the gap limit to 50 and restore the wallet from seed, the funded address will no longer be monitored by electrum untill you've funded address 48 (and because of the gap limit, electrum will now derive and monitor address up untill 99).

In case you were serious and this really is your seed: your wallet is now compromised because you posted a picture of your seed on a public forum.. empty this wallet and never use it again. Anybody can restore your wallet using electrum and sign transactions funding the addresses in this wallet from this point forward.

After you emptied this wallet, make sure you also move the funds you might have on the forks (like bch or bsv), the same seed can be used to steal those ones to.

If you're the seller, there should be no need to get lured to an unknown (and potentially scam) exchange. You should just use a trusted wallet (desktop, paper or hardware) on a clean PC to generate an address, the buyer should then fund this address and you should wait untill the transaction funding your address is confirmed before transferring the domain. At no point should you be forced to use an exchange for anything...

Don't let your buyer talk you into opening an account on an exchange to receive funds, don't let him talk you into exchanging your funds into fiat on an unknown exchange, don't let him talk you into sending funds to an unknown exchange to "verify" your account.

Like i said, use a destkop (electrum, core), hardware (trezor, ledger) or properly generated paper (bitaddress.org => offline) wallet to generate an address and let him fund this address. You shouldn't care where he got the coins, nor should you use an untrusted exchange to exchange your crypto back into fiat (if you wish to do this)

As a rule of thumb, any service that requires you to fund one of their addresses in order to verify an account should be considered scams... There are plenty of ways to verify your identity, funding an address isn't one of them.

Since the website is more or less "unfindable", might i ask how you ended up with these guys?

Looks interesting, but to be honest there are a ton of questions and remarks..

• I'm dyslectic myself, but even I see loads and loads of spelling errors on about every page
• I see no info about your company, no tos, no faq, no vat info, no quality assurance, no country from which the goods will be shipped, no source of the seeds
• I'm missing a lot of info with these plants .. are they indoor/outdoor, which climate, yield, taste,...
• PayPal payments seem broken (at least direct checkout
• since you're brand new, I'd urge you to work with a trusted forum escrow... Having somebody trusted handling the funds will probably boost your sales
• ...

Well, we don't order food that often, but i estimate one order usually sits between €50 and €70. At home, we place an order every couple of months (like ~6 times a year), when we're on holiday in a rented apartment, we order food ~2 times/week (when we're on holiday, we don't like to spend our time cooking meals, so we order out more often).
The transaction fees are more or less neglectible, i mean, at this moment, the recommanded fee for a 2 input, 2 output transaction is ~1680 satoshi's... That's only 12 cents, so for a €50 order it doesn't really matter that much.

I do agree that at times of mempool congestion and a fee bidding war, when fees rose exponentially, it wasn't a good idear to order €50 worth of food since you had to pay several euro's worth of tx fees to get your small tx confirmed. But these days luckily passed a long time ago, hopefully they don't come back any time soon.

I've used crypto to buy some food from takeaway.com when i was on holliday. Mostly because i always use crypto to order food from them when i'm home aswell, so i know they're legit.
Other than this, i usually stick to fiat 

Well... This is a very difficult question that depends on many local factors: your budget; your level of knowledge; your power price; the existance of a suitable mining room; the level of risk you're willing to take; wether or not you have spare "hardware" laying around (shelves, A/C, PSU's, cables, switches,...). There is no general answer.

There is an ASIC available for most (but not all) algo's that can be linked to the most stable crypto's, so if your power price is low and your budget is high, mining an established coin with a new asic might be more "stable". I think most mining farm owners that mine for a living (not as a hobby) are running ASIC farms nowadays...

CPU/GPU mining is mostly for newer coins whose network has a low hashrate and using a POW algo that isn't used by any of the "established" coins. If you mine these coins, you'll usually end up as a bag holder of worthless coins, altough there are some exeptions. Even if you CPU/GPU mine a new altcoin and hope it'll become a big hit, you're usually better off buying the new coin from an exchange when it's still cheap instead of CPU/GPU mining...

If you want to learn, CPU/GPU mining should be fine... Maybe even mine on the testnet? If you want to mine for a living, i'd start by calculating if mining can actually be profitable in your specific situation (hint: for a lot of people, mining profitably isn't achievable)

It might be sufficient to remove the blocks from ~/.bitcoin
The blocks take up more than 200 Gb...

Do make sure you do not delete your wallet.dat (even make a new backup on a secure medium before removing the blocks).

Do realize that if you start your wallet again, it'll need to redownload and reparse all blocks again...

Immutability and decentralization are actually 2 main building blocks around which the bitcoin protocol was designed. If you think these aspects of crypto are flaws you should stick to fiat. A bank can move funds around at the push of a button. They can freeze your funds or roll back any transaction they want to. I personally like bitcoin because it's irreversible, sure you have to think and double check before broadcasting a transaction, but as soon as your address is funded by a confirmed transaction, no central authority has the power to take your funds back.

Usually, these kind of sites generate a unique deposit address for each user. That's the way these get tracked. The message in the uri you posted is for your information only, it never ends up in a block.

Thanks for the raffle
Happy holidays

You'll need to fix your mobile template, I tried visiting your site using my mobile, and it was more or less unusable.

Also: only 1 bump per 24 hours is allowed. If you keep replying to yourself multiple times per hour, you'll get your account banned in no-time

Which specs do you need (hosting-wise?)
My dedicated box's resources are almost completely used, but I can still offer you a small vps for free if you want to (100 Mb disk, 512 Mb ram, 2 vcpu's,...)

I'm taking my family out to dinner this evening so I will revisit this thread (and my pm's) tomorrow afternoon in case you decide to take my offer...