Core lightning in Debian

Bottom line is that the great evil of python is that building installs for python projects is a nightmare. It has its equivalent of dll hell.

So nothing ever works on any system other than the exact system it was built on.

The great strength of lua is that every lua program runs its own lua interpreter with its own lua libraries.

Instead we have python version hell and pip hell.

So, docker.

1 Failed attempt to us Docker lightning

The docker container as supplied instantly terminates with an error because it expects to find /root/.lightning/bitcoin which of course does not exist inside the docker container, and you cannot externally muck with the files inside a docker container, except by running commands that the container supports.

So to run docked lightning, a whole lot of configuration information needs to be supplied, which is nowhere explained.

You cannot give it command line parameters, so you have to set them in environment variables, which do not seem to be documented, and you have to mount the directories external to your docker container

docker run -it --rm \
    --name clightning \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_NETWORK=bitcoin \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_RPC_PORT=10420 \
    -v $HOME/.lightning:/root/.lightning \
    -v $HOME/.bitcoin:/root/.bitcoin \
elementsproject/lightningd:v23.11.2-amd64 \
lightningd --network=bitcoin --log-level=debug

docker run -it –rm
–name clightning
-e LIGHTNINGD_NETWORK=bitcoin
-e LIGHTNINGD_RPC_PORT=10420
-v $HOME/.lightning:/root/.lightning
-v $HOME/.bitcoin:/root/.bitcoin
elementsproject/lightningd:v23.11.2-amd64
lightningd –network=bitcoin –log-level=debug

docker run -it --rm \
    --name clightning \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_NETWORK=bitcoin \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_RPC_PORT=10420 \
    -v $HOME/.lightning:/root/.lightning \
    -v $HOME/.bitcoin:/root/.bitcoin \
elementsproject/lightningd:v22.11.1 \
lightningd --help

docker run -it --rm \
    --name clightning \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_NETWORK=bitcoin \
    -e LIGHTNINGD_RPC_PORT=10420 \
elementsproject/lightningd:v22.11.1 \
lightningd --help

The docker container can do one thing only: Run lightning with no
command arguments.

Which is great if I have everything setup, but in order
to have everything setup, I need documentation and examples
which do not seem readily applicable to lightning inside
docker.  I will want to interact with my lighning that is
inside docker with lightning-cli, which lives outside
docker, and because of python install hell, I will want
to use plugins that live inside docker, with which I will
interact using a lightning-cli that lives outside docker.

But trouble is docker comes with a pile of scripts and plugins, and
the coupling between these and the docker image is going to need
a PhD in dockerology.

The docker image just dies, because it expects no end of stuff that
just is not there.


## Install docker

```bash
# remove any dead and broken obsolete dockers that might be hanging around
for pkg in docker.io docker-doc docker-compose podman-docker containerd runc; do sudo apt-get remove $pkg; done

# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y  pinentry-gnome3 tor parcimonie xloadimage scdaemon pinentry-doc
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian bookworm stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
docker run hello-world

1.1 install lightning within docker

Check available images in docker hub

docker pull elementsproject/lightningd:v23.11.2-amd64
docker images

2 Failed attempt to build core lightning in Debian

2.1 Set up a non Debian python

Core lightning requires python and pip Debian does not like outsiders mucking with its fragile and complicated python.

So you have to set up a virtual environment in which you are free to do what you like without affecting the rest of Debian:

The double braces «» mean that you do not copy the text inside the curly braces, which is only there for example. You have to substitute your own python version, mutas mutandis, which you learned by typing python3 -V

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y full-upgrade
sudo apt install -y python3-pip
sudo apt install -y build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev
sudo apt install -y python3-dev python3-venv
python3 -V
mkdir mypython
cd mypython
python«3.11» -m venv my_env

You now have your own python environment, which you activate with the command

source my_env/bin/activate

Within this environment, you no longer have to use python3 and pip3, nor should you use them. You just use python and pip, which means that all those tutorials on python projects out there on the web now work

All your python stuff that is not part of Debian managed python should be inside your mypython directory, and when you leave it

deactivate

2.2 building core lightining

Outside your python environment:

sudo apt-get install -y \
  autoconf automake build-essential git libtool libsqlite3-dev \
  python3 python3-pip net-tools zlib1g-dev libsodium-dev gettext \
  python3-json5 python3-flask python3-gunicorn \
  cargo rustfmt protobuf-compiler

Then, inside your mypython directory, activate your python environment and install the python stuff

source my_env/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install poetry
pip install flask-cors flask_restx pyln-client flask-socketio \
gevent gevent-websocket mako
pip install -r plugins/clnrest/requirements.txt

The instructions on the web for ubuntu say --user and pip3, but on Debian, we accomplish the equivalent through using a virtual environment.

--user is Ubuntu’s way of keeping your custom python separate, but Debian insists on a more total separation.

Which means that anything that relies heavily on custom python has to be inside this environment, so to be on the safe side, we are going to launch core lighting with a bash script that first goes into this environment.

poetry is an enormous pile of python tools, which core lightning uses, and outside this environment, probably will not work.

Inside your environment:

git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning
git tag
# find the most recent release version
# mutas mutandis
git checkout «v23.11.2»
./configure
make
# And then it dies

 reaction.la gpg key 154588427F2709CD9D7146B01C99BB982002C39F
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.