admin.macaroon missing

[Stadicus]

I am opening this issue on behalf of several users that followed my RaspiBolt guide and had the issue that the admin.macaroon was not created.

• Guide: https://github.com/Stadicus/guides/tree/master/raspibolt
• Issue: admin.macaroon missing after installing lnd raspibolt/raspibolt#8

Would you mind glancing over the installation part in my guide to check if I missed something? Personally, I never had this issue and everything went as expected...

• Install LND:
  https://github.com/Stadicus/guides/blob/master/raspibolt/raspibolt_40_lnd.md#install-lnd

Thanks!

[Roasbeef]

If they had a partial installation, then their data directory might have been messed up from a prior installation. If they delete the macaroons, then they'll be regenerated.

[GeorgeSpark-Stahl]

I'm also seeing this issue, although I didn't follow that guide to get setup. I had an existing lnd installation which I deleted when I upgraded. But now only macaroons.db is getting recreated. I've searched around to see if the files were created elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find them. This is on macOS High Sierra.

[Roasbeef]

Are you starting lnd with --no-macaroons? In that case macaroons won't be generated at all if you do it upon initial set up.

[GeorgeSpark-Stahl]

I was not originally running with --no-macaroons, although I had added it as a workaround. I went to go recreate the issue by removing --no-macaroons and it recreated the correct macaroons, so everything is great now. 🤷‍♂️

[aakselrod]

@Stadicus, do people notice the macaroon issue after switching from testnet to mainnet, or is it present when they first start in testnet mode? The macaroon DB is encrypted with the same password as the wallet, so if you're moving to a new wallet, you need to delete the macaroon DB and any macaroons generated from that DB, which is missing from the instructions for moving to mainnet.

ETA: If the user happens to use the same password for the mainnet wallet that they had for the testnet wallet, this bypasses that problem.

[Stadicus]

I guess that could be the issue. I'll adjust the guide asap to clean up before the switch. Best to delete everything, or only specific files?

[aakselrod]

Delete the admin.macaroon, readonly.macaroon, and macaroons.db files. Do this any time you switch your wallet to a new one.

[cootpursuits]

I had this issue when I first started in testnet mode. macaroons.db was generated, but admin.macaroon and readonly.macaroon were not.

[aakselrod]

@cootpursuits Are you running both lnd and lncli as the bitcoin user? Under what directory is the macaroons.db being generated?

[aakselrod]

@Stadicus It's created right after the wallet password is input:

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/lnd.go#L222

Based on that, there's another interesting possible way to make it fail:

• Start lnd, create wallet with password with lncli create
• Stop lnd, delete macaroons.db and *.macaroon
• Start lnd, enter the wrong password using lncli unlock

This will create a new macaroons.db, which will be encrypted with the wrong password. After that, the wallet decryption will fail. If you start lnd again, it will only be able to open one of macaroons.db or wallet.db.

[Stadicus]

Thanks a lot for the clarification. I removed my question as not to bother you with trivial stuff and tested myself (as described in raspibolt/raspibolt#8 (comment)).

[aakselrod]

Happy to help, just can't seem to reproduce it myself without a mismatched wallet/macaroon DB password.

[Stadicus]

I just thought that I was able to recreate the issue, but it was my own error. For testing purposes, I quickly entered the password "12345" and got the following response:

bitcoin@RaspiBolt:/mnt/hdd $ lncli create
Input wallet password:
Confirm wallet password:

Do you have an existing cipher seed mnemonic you want to use? (Enter y/n): n

Your cipher seed can optionally be encrypted.
Input your passphrase you wish to encrypt it (or press enter to proceed without a cipher seed passphrase):

Generating fresh cipher seed...

!!!YOU MUST WRITE DOWN THIS SEED TO BE ABLE TO RESTORE THE WALLET!!!

---------------BEGIN LND CIPHER SEED---------------
...
...
...
---------------END LND CIPHER SEED-----------------

!!!YOU MUST WRITE DOWN THIS SEED TO BE ABLE TO RESTORE THE WALLET!!!
[lncli] rpc error: code = Unknown desc = password must have at least 8 characters
bitcoin@RaspiBolt:/mnt/hdd $

No *.macaroon files and no macaroons db is created.

IMHO it's very easy to miss the error output on the last line. I think it would be a good idea to cancel the create command right after the password entry, and not ask for for additional information and even generate a mnemonicon.

Just my 5 satoshis. :-)