Commands for working with LND balances.
- Requires an installation of Node v12.0+
- Have a RaspiBlitz? Check out this install guide
If you want to try out any command without npm install, you can also do npx balanceofsatoshis
to run a command directly.
If you have Docker installed, you can run through Docker instead.
npm install -g balanceofsatoshis
Verify it's installed:
bos --version
# current installed version
To see a list of available options and flags run:
bos help
# Or get individual help with a command
bos help commandName
Or ask about commands on Telegram
If you want autocomplete on commands and options you can do:
## Autocomplete on ZSH shells (on startup: you can add this to ~/.zshrc)
source <(bos completion zsh)
## Autocomplete on bash (on startup: add to ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile)
source <(bos completion bash)
# See an accounting formatted list of various types of transactions
bos accounting "category"
# See total balance, including pending funds, excluding future commit fees
bos balance
# Get the number of days the node cert remains valid
bos cert-validity-days
# Receive on-chain funds via a regular address
bos chain-deposit
# Receive funds via swap on-chain
bos chain-receive "amount"
# See the current fee estimates confirmation targets
bos chainfees
# Show chain fees paid
bos chart-chain-fees
# Show routing fees earned
bos chart-fees-earned
# Show routing fees paid
bos chart-fees-paid
# Show a chart of payments received
bos chart-payments-received
# See details on how closed channels resolved on-chain
bos closed
# Export credentials
bos credentials
# Create a utxo fan-out with on-chain funds
bos fanout "amount" "count"
# View outbound fee rates and update outbound fee rates to peers
bos fees
# Query the node to find something like a payment, channel or node
bos find "query"
# Output a summarized version of peers forwarded towards
bos forwards
# Create a signed raw transaction for an on-chain transfer
bos fund "address" "amount"
# See help about a command
bos help "command"
# Run gateway service for https://ln-operator.github.io/ UI
bos gateway
# Look up the channels and fee rates of a node by its public key
bos graph "pubkey"
# Output the sum total of remote channel liquidity
bos inbound-liquidity
# Enforce rules on inbound channels
bos inbound-channel-rules
# Increase inbound liquidity to the node
bos increase-inbound-liquidity
# Increase the outbound liquidity of the node
bos increase-outbound-liquidity
# View and adjust list of saved nodes
bos nodes
# Open channels to public keys using external funding
bos open "public_keys..."
# Outputs the sum total of local channel liquidity
bos outbound-liquidity
# Pay a payment request (invoice), probing first
bos pay "payment_request"
# Show channel-connected peers
bos peers
# Output the price of BTC
bos price
# Test if funds can be sent to a destination
bos probe "payment_request/public_key"
# Make a ping keysend-request to a node
bos purchase-ping "public_key"
# Rebalance funds between peers
bos rebalance
# Remove all channels with a peer
bos remove-peer
# Get a general report of the node activity
bos report
# Send funds using keysend and an optional message to a node
bos send
# Service keysend-requests
bos service-keysend-requests
# Connect up to a Telegram bot
bos telegram
# Unlock the wallet if it is locked
bos unlock "path_to_password_file"
# Show unspent coin outputs
bos utxos
- The
accounting
command howto - The
open
command howto - The
rebalance
command howto - Another
rebalance
command howto
Want to stack some sats? Write your own LN paywalled guide!
By default bos
expects tls.cert
in the root of the default lnd
directory and
admin.macaroon
in <default_lnd_dir>/data/chain/bitcoin/<network>
.
Default LND directories:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Lnd/
- Linux:
~/.lnd/
It will check first for a mainnet macaroon, then a testnet macaroon.
If you have another node and it is already using balanceofsatoshis
, you can
add it as a "saved node" using bos nodes --add
.
Otherwise you can copy the credentials into a saved nodes directory:
To use bos
with arbitrary external nodes (or nodes with custom
configuration), two things need to be done:
-
Create directory
~/.bos/
, and add node credentials in a format of:~/.bos/YOUR_NODE_NAME/credentials.json
Use any shorthand you'd like when choosing this profile node name
-
Each file should have the following format:
{ "cert": "base64 tls.cert value", "macaroon": "base64 .macaroon value", "socket": "host:port" }
Note:
cert
and (admin)macaroon
should have base64-encoded, and newline-stripped content of the files. To get the strings in appropriate format you can run, ex:# For `cert` base64 ~/.lnd/tls.cert | tr -d '\n' # For `macaroon` base64 ~/.lnd/data/chain/bitcoin/mainnet/admin.macaroon | tr -d '\n'
Note_2:
socket
should containhost:port
pointing tolnd
's gRPC interface,localhost:10009
by convention.
You can also set cert_path
and macaroon_path
to the path of the relevant
files instead.
Note: Umbrel is not FOSS software, use at your own risk.
- Identify your Umbrel home dir, like /home/umbrel/umbrel
- Look in the .env file in that dir for the
LND_IP
to use as the socket to connect to
You can also use umbrel.local if that is in your Umbrel TLS cert but you will have to make sure the hostname is known to the client.
{
"cert_path": "/home/umbrel/umbrel/lnd/tls.cert",
"macaroon_path": "/home/umbrel/umbrel/lnd/data/chain/bitcoin/mainnet/admin.macaroon",
"socket": "LND_IP:10009"
}
- Now when you do a command, specify
--node umbrel
or whatever your dir is:bos --node umbrel balance
To run commands on nodes specified this way, you need to suffix commands with their name, ex:
bos balance --node=SAVED_NODE_NAME
bos forwards --node=SAVED_NODE_NAME
If a saved node is actually your default node, you can set an environment variable to avoid adding the --node prefix
export BOS_DEFAULT_SAVED_NODE=nodename
If that is set, it will use that node if no node is specified.
You can also add a JSON file to your .bos directory: config.json, add "default_saved_node": "nodename" to set the default via a file instead
Some commands are designed to return outputs that can be piped or used in other CLI programs.
Make a textfile in the terminal with newline separated pubkeys and the capacity of the channels.
cat bos_channels.txt
│ File: bos_channels.txt
───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 │ 0337...1986 --amount=3000000
2 │ 02a4...20de --amount=3000000
3 │ 023c...0dec --amount=1000000
bos open $(cat bos_channels.txt)
expr $(bos balance --node=savedNode1) + $(bos balance --node=savedNode2)
# outputs the combined balance of both nodes
# Cron every 5 minutes adjust fees
*/5 * * * * /bin/timeout -s 2 30 /home/ubuntu/update-fees.sh
update-fees.sh:
#!/bin/bash
# Raise the outbound fees to a public key when inbound increases
/home/ubuntu/.npm-global/bin/bos fees --to PUBLIC_KEY --set-fee-rate="IF(INBOUND>10000000,1000,500)"
Keep a channel balanced between two of your own nodes
# Cron: every 30 minutes send funds to reach 50:50
*/30 * * * * /home/ubuntu/.npm-global/bin/bos send PUBKEY --max-fee 0 --message="rebalance" --amount="IF(OUTBOUND+1*m>(LIQUIDITY/2), OUTBOUND-(LIQUIDITY/2), 0)"
If you want to 50:50 rebalance with a peer node, you can use --out-target-inbound=capacity/2
Some commands are made with the idea that they can trigger an alert or regular report by piping the output of a command into some reporting script like sendnotification which works with AWS SNS service to deliver notifications
Examples of shell scripts that could be executed by crontab:
# cert-expiration-alert.sh
#!/bin/bash
/path/to/bos cert-validity-days --below 30 | \
/path/to/sendnotification SNS "sns-topic-id" "Warning: %s days left on TLS cert" \
--nonzero --subject="Cert expiration warning"
# sends email when the certification has less than 30 days left until invalid
# daily-report.sh
#!/bin/bash
/path/to/bos report --styled 2>&1 | \
/path/to/sendnotification SNS "sns-topic-id" "%s" --subject="Daily node update"
# sends email about what has happened on the node in the past day
# low-offchain-outbound-liquidity alert
#!/bin/bash
/path/to/bos balance --offchain --below 4000000 | \
/path/to/sendnotification SNS "sns-topic-id" "off-chain balance deficit: %s sats" \
--nonzero --subject="Low balance warning"
# sends email if the channel balance goes below a threshold
# low-inbound-liquidity.sh
#!/bin/bash
/path/to/bos inbound-liquidity --below=1000000 2>&1 | \
/path/to/sendnotification SNS "sns-topic-id" \
"WARNING inbound-liquidity deficit: %s sats" --nonzero \
--subject="Low inbound liquidity warning: node1"
# sends email if the inbound liquidity drops below a 1,000,000 sats
If you are running a long-running command and want it to persist, you will need something like Docker or nohup or tmux to assist you in that and then kill the process and restart it when updating.
Nohup example:
nohup /home/bos/.npm-global/bin/bos telegram --connect CONNECT_CODE > /dev/null &
Docker example:
docker run -d --restart always -v $HOME/.bos:/home/node/.bos alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis telegram --connect CONNECT_CODE
This presumes you have Docker installed.
Install the Docker image:
docker pull alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis
You can also build the image yourself: npm run build-docker
, this will make
balanceofsatoshis.tar.gz
that you can rsync or scp somewhere else and then
do docker load < balanceofsatoshis.tar.gz
.
Once the image is installed, you can "docker run" commands for all the commands:
# Make sure you have a home directory created to give Docker access to
mkdir $HOME/.bos
docker run -it --rm -v $HOME/.bos:/home/node/.bos alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis --version
# Should output the version
This maps your home directory to the docker home directory to enable persistence of credentials.
If you want it to automatically detect your local node, also pass the LND home dir as an additional -v argument to docker run:
If you are on MacOS:
--network="host" -v $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Lnd/:/home/node/.lnd:ro
Or on Linux:
--network="host" -v $HOME/.lnd:/home/node/.lnd:ro
On Umbrel this would be:
# add Umbrel specific details:
## --network="host"
## --add-host=umbrel.local:192.168.1.23
## -v $HOME/umbrel/lnd:/home/node/.lnd:ro
docker run -it --rm --network="host" --add-host=umbrel.local:192.168.1.23 -v $HOME/.bos:/home/node/.bos -v $HOME/umbrel/lnd:/home/node/.lnd:ro alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis report
Note: For umbrel-os users, when running the above
docker run command, ensure the "192.168.1.23" portion of the command is updated to reflect the
IP of the lnd container. You can find the IP by looking for the LND_IP
value inside the
$HOME/umbrel/.env
file.
(Note: Umbrel is not FOSS software, use at your own risk.)
Otherwise you can just pass the local node credentials as shown above using the saved nodes.
If you are running a long-running command like telegram
, use -d --restart always
instead
of -it --rm
to run in daemon mode and auto-restart.
Note: if you are used to using ctrl+c to terminate the process, that doesn't work on Docker.
Instead, you can use ctrl+p and then ctrl+q to background the interactive mode, then do
docker ps
and docker rm
to kill the instance.
If you don't want to use the Dockerfile, you can build a docker file for yourself
FROM node:latest
RUN npm install balanceofsatoshis
ENTRYPOINT [ "/node_modules/balanceofsatoshis/bos" ]
If you don't want to type out "docker run", and don't have an alias for it, you can create a simple shell script to fill that part in:
#! /usr/bin/env bash
docker run -it --rm -v=$HOME/.bos:/root/.bos bos:latest ${@:1}
You can also define an alias for placing in ~/.profile
or ~/.bash_profile
:
alias bos="docker run -it --rm -v $HOME/.bos:/home/node/.bos alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis"
Adjust this alias to however you run the full Docker command. Remember to execute the ~/.profile
to install the alias into your current session: . ~/.profile
You can also create an alias to run a command in the background
alias bosd="docker run -d --rm -v $HOME/.bos:/home/node/.bos alexbosworth/balanceofsatoshis"