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https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent

bolt-agent enables you to automate your node management through our bolt.observer platform
https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent

alerting channel lightning lightning-network

Last synced: 6 months ago
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bolt-agent enables you to automate your node management through our bolt.observer platform

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README 

          
# Agent



Bolt-agent is a tool for workflow based node management automation through [bolt.observer](https://bolt.observer) platform.



## Contents:



### bolt-agent



utility to monitor and manage lightning node



The usage should be pretty self explanatory:



```

NAME:

   bolt-agent - Utility to monitor and manage lightning node



USAGE:

   bolt-agent [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]



VERSION:

   v0.2.2



COMMANDS:

   help, h  Shows a list of commands or help for one command



GLOBAL OPTIONS:

   --allowedentropy value      allowed entropy in bits for channel balances (default: 64)

   --apikey value              api key

   --channel-whitelist value   path to file containing a whitelist of channels

   --interval value            interval to poll - 10s, 1m, 10m or 1h (default: "10s")

   --lnddir value              path to lnd's base directory (default: "/home/user/.lnd")

   --macaroonpath value        path to macaroon file

   --private                   report private data as well (default: false)

   --preferipv4                if you have the choice between IPv6 and IPv4 prefer IPv4 (default: false)

   --rpcserver value           host:port of ln daemon (default: "localhost:10009")

   --tlscertpath value         path to TLS certificate (default: "/home/user/.lnd/tls.cert")

   --channel-whitelist value   path to file containing a whitelist of channels

   --verbosity value           log level for V logs (default: 0)

   --help, -h                  show help

   --version, -v               print the version



ADVANCED OPTIONS:

   --datastore-url             datastore URL (default: agent-api.bolt.observer:443)

   --ignorecln                 ignore CLN socket (default: false)

   --keepalive value           keepalive interval (if nothing changed after this time an empty message will be sent) (default: "60s")

   --public value              used together with --channel-whitelist (default: false)

   --url value                 report url (default: "https://ingress.bolt.observer/api/node-data-report/")

   --userest                   use REST API when true instead of gRPC (default: false)

   --fetch-invoices            fetch invoices (default: 0)

   --fetch-forwards            fetch forwards (default: 0)

   --fetch-payments            fetch payments (default: 0)

   --noplugins                 disable plugins (default: false)



GLOG OPTIONS (described in https://github.com/google/glog#setting-flags):

   --verbosity (instead of -v)

   --logtostderr

   --stderrthreshold

   --alsologtostderr

   --vmodule

   --log_dir

   --log_backtrace_at

```



Agent works with LND and CoreLightning and tries the best to have sane defaults so you can just start it up on your node without further hassle.



Example:

```

bolt-agent --apikey key

```



Only thing that is mandatory is the apikey which can also be provided through `API_KEY` environment variable:

```

export API_KEY=changeme

bolt-agent

```



Agent is using `glog` library for logging which needs writable `/tmp` (use `--logtostderr` to prevent writing to filesystem).



Flag `--private` means whether you want to report data for private ("unannounced") channels too (when true). The default is false.

There is an advanced option of filtering what channels exactly are reported documented in "Filtering on agent side" section.



For more information about what exactly is reported read [DATA.md](./DATA.md).



#### Advanced options



If you have a custom LND directory (`/storage` in the example) you might need:



```

bolt-agent --lnddir /storage/lnd/ --tlscertpath /storage/lnd/data/secrets/lnd.cert

```



but that should be it.



By default it will try to communicate with LND using local gRPC connection and `readonly.macaroon`.



You can use `--userest` to start using REST API - in that case `--rpcserver` can be complete URL to the endpoint.



```

bolt-agent --userest --rpcserver https://bolt.observer/endpoint

```



For CoreLightning it will use UNIX domain socket. By default agent will try to use `~/.lightning/bitcoin/lightning-rpc`.

If that file exists program will default to CoreLightning so if have LND installed on the node too and do not want to use CLN there is a flag

`--ignorecln`. You can manually override name of UNIX domain socket using `--rpcserver` flag.

Example:



```

bolt-agent --rpcserver /storage/cln/socket

```



Make sure agent is running with correct permissions to access the socket.



There is support for remote connections via commando plugin but you cannot use that option via command-line flags at the moment. We suggest to use

`socat` utility if you wish to monitor a remote CLN node.



## Install



We provide a standalone statically compiled binary. The targets are `linux` (amd64 build for GNU/Linux), `rasp` (aarch64 build for GNU/Linux) suitable for installation on your Raspberry PI and `darwin` (amd64 build for MacOS).

If you need some different architecture that is no problem except that you will have to build the binaries yourself (so you will need to install Golang). You can also open an issue / pull request to extend the defaults (or provide better naming).



### Script



You can run:

```

curl https://bolt.observer/agent | sh

```

to install the latest version of agent.



The executed script is present [here](./install.sh) so you can first check what it does. Or you can also do a manual installation.



### Nix



If you have [Nix](https://nixos.org/) with [flake support](https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes) you can do:

```

nix profile install 'github:bolt-observer/agent'

```



### Manual installation steps



Script will execute same steps that you can invoke manually:



* fetch latest revision from https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent/releases



```

wget https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent/releases/download/v0.2.2/bolt-agent-v0.2.2-linux.zip https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent/releases/download/v0.2.2/manifest-v0.2.2.txt.asc https://github.com/bolt-observer/agent/releases/download/v0.2.2/manifest-v0.2.2.txt

```



* verify integrity



```

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bolt-observer/agent/main/scripts/keys/developers.asc | gpg --import

gpg --verify manifest-v0.2.2.txt.asc manifest-v0.2.2.txt

```



and you should see:

```

gpg:                using RSA key F4B8B3B59C1E5AA39A1B9636E897355718E1DBF4

gpg: Good signature from "Gregor Pogacnik " [ultimate]

```



or



```

gpg:                using RSA key 04AC8A162C036B650A271A6360886AC6567069C5

gpg: Good signature from "bolt " [ultimate]

```



* unpack the compressed binary



```

unzip bolt-agent-v0.2.2-linux.zip

```



* copy the binary to a common place



```

cp bolt-agent-v0.2.2-linux /usr/local/bin/bolt-agent

```



* start the binary



```

bolt-agent -apikey changeme

```



* you may want to run the agent as a systemd service (we have a simple systemd template [here](./bolt-agent.service))



You need to do that only once:



```

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bolt-observer/agent/main/bolt-agent.service

cp bolt-agent.service /etc/systemd/system/bolt-agent.service

$EDITOR /etc/systemd/system/bolt-agent.service # to change API_KEY

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl enable bolt-agent

systemctl start bolt-agent

```



## Docker



You can use the docker image from GitHub:



Usage:



```

docker run -v /tmp:/tmp -e API_KEY=changeme ghcr.io/bolt-observer/agent:v0.2.2

```



## Filtering on agent side



You can limit what channnels are reported using `--channel-whitelist` option. It specifies a local file path to be used as a whitelist of what channels to report.

Channel IDs are short channel identifiers in LND format (a valid id is `792080480214450176` but not `720393x2228x0`)

When adding `--private` to `--channel-whitelist` this means every private channel AND whatever is listed in the file. There is also `--public` to allow all public channels.

Using the options without `--channel-whitelist` makes no sense since by default all public channels are reported however it has to be explicit with `--channel-whitelist` in order

to automatically allow all public channels (beside what is allowed through the file).

If you set `--private` and `--public` then no matter what you add to the `--channel-whitelist` file everything will be reported.



The file looks like this:



```

# Comments start with a # character

# You can list pubkeys for example:

0288037d3f0bdcfb240402b43b80cdc32e41528b3e2ebe05884aff507d71fca71a # bolt.observer

# which means any channel where peer pubkey is this

# or you can specify a specific short channel id e.g.,

759930760125546497

# too, invalid lines like

whatever

# will be ignored (and logged as a warning, aliases also don't work!)

# Validity for channel id is not checked (it just has to be numeric), thus:

1337

# is perfectly valid (altho it won't match and thus allow the reporting of

# any additional channel).

# Empty files means nothing - in whitelist context: do not report anything.

```



## Components



Internally we use:

* [nodedata](./nodedata): an abstraction for running the periodic checks and reporting balance related changes

* [filter](./filter): this is used to filter specific channels on the agent side

* [checkermonitoring](./checkermonitoring): is used for reporting metrics via Graphite (not used directly in bolt-agent here)

* [lightning](./lightning): an abstraction around lightning node API (that furthermore heavily depends on common code from [lnd](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd))

* [lnsocket](./lnsocket): a way to establish a commando connection with CLN nodes

* [agent](./agent): is the GRPC client for reporting payment data

* [actions](./actions): is the GRPC client for getting what actios to invoke

* [raw](./raw): is the connection between [agent](./agent) API and [lightning](./lightning) API

* [plugins](./plugins): contains the plugins



You might want to read about [boltz plugin](./plugins/boltz/README.md).



## Dependencies



This code depends on some [common code](https://github.com/bolt-observer/go_common).



## Documentation



Read complete documentation on: [https://docs.bolt.observer](https://docs.bolt.observer).



## Troubleshooting



Do:

```

go get -v github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd@v0.15.4-beta

```

or else you get an ancient version and everything breaks (should be good due to go.mod/sums now).