Setup a Lightning Neutrino Node with LIT and Letsencrypt in seconds on a tiny VPS

Register a domain name and point the DNS A record to the VPS's public IP. Don't start the procedure until the zone is propagated and you have a fully qualified domain name which A to your VPS

git clone https://github.com/massmux/nimblenode

• edit docker-compose.yml setting: 1) the UI password (at least 8 chars long), 2) your node's ALIAS, 3) your fully qualified hostname
• pull the image from dockerhub

docker pull massmux/lit

• Run the containers

cd nimblenode
docker compose up -d

• Create the wallet. first usage

./scripts/create

You will be asked about the wallet encryption key and how to setup the seed phrase. Backup them all carefully offline.

• that's it
• after around 20 minutes, connect to the server with:

https://your-domain-name:8443

IMPORTANT: if you stop the docker container and restart you need to unlock your wallet with command

./scripts/unlock

Balance of Satoshis (BOS) is preinstalled. To get this tool automatically configured, just run the command below. NB: You must execute this script only after created the LND Wallet (with /scripts/create).

./scripts/initbos

then you can use the tool by entering the container:

docker exec -ti bos bash

Just connect to your running container with

docker exec -ti lit bash

then you can access the lncli command as usual to manage your node from the command line.

This will completely whipeout your node and all lightning data (so be sure to have a backup or to have emptied all your funds). This is nice to redo the stuff from the beginning or to create a fresh node.

./scripts/reset

The whole system is available and configured on DENALI Lightning Node (LN2) VPS.