LIGHTNING-CONNECT(7)

NAME

lightning-connect -- Command for connecting to another lightning node

SYNOPSIS

connect id [host] [port]

DESCRIPTION

The connect RPC command establishes a new connection with another node in the Lightning Network.

id represents the target node's public key. As a convenience, id may be of the form id@host or id@host:port. In this case, the host and port parameters must be omitted.

host is the peer's hostname or IP address.

If not specified, the port depends on the current network:

•   bitcoin mainnet: 9735.

•   bitcoin testnet: 19735.

•   bitcoin signet: 39735.

•   bitcoin regtest: 19846.

If host is not specified (or doesn't work), the connection will be attempted to an IP belonging to id obtained through gossip with other already connected peers. This can fail if your C-lightning node is a fresh install that has not connected to any peers yet (your node has no gossip yet), or if the target id is a fresh install that has no channels yet (nobody will gossip about a node until it has one published channel).

If host begins with a / it is interpreted as a local path, and the connection will be made to that local socket (see bind-addr in lightningd-config(5)).

Connecting to a node is just the first step in opening a channel with another node. Once the peer is connected a channel can be opened with lightning-fundchannel(7).

If there are active channels with the peer, connect returns once all the subdaemons are in place to handle the channels, not just once it's connected.

RETURN VALUE

On success, an object is returned, containing:

•   id (pubkey): the peer we connected to

•   features (hex): BOLT 9 features bitmap offered by peer

•   direction (string): Whether they initiated connection or we did (one of "in", "out")

•   address (object): Address information (mainly useful if direction is out):

    •   type (string): Type of connection (torv2/torv3 only if direction is out) (one of "local socket", "ipv4", "ipv6", "torv2", "torv3")

    If type is "local socket":

    •   socket (string): socket filename

    If type is "ipv4", "ipv6", "torv2" or "torv3":

    •   address (string): address in expected format for type

    •   port (u16): port number

ERRORS

On failure, one of the following errors will be returned:

    { "code" : 400, "message" : "Unable to connect, no address known for peer" }

If some addresses are known but connecting to all of them failed, the message will contain details about the failures:

    { "code" : 401, "message" : "..." }

If the peer disconnected while we were connecting:

    { "code" : 402, "message" : "..." }

If the given parameters are wrong:

    { "code" : -32602, "message" : "..." }

AUTHOR

Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> is mainly responsible. Felix <fixone@gmail.com> is the original author of this manpage.

SEE ALSO

lightning-fundchannel(7), lightning-listpeers(7), lightning-listchannels(7), lightning-disconnect(7)

RESOURCES

Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning