LN-Store-in-a-Box Overview

This repository represents a basic plug-and-play setup for a Wordpress-based Lightning Store.

Vagrant is used to build a VM locally for testing and configuration. Packer is used to create a bootable image on GCP/AWS. See the respective directories for more details - vagrant/ubuntu/ and packer/ubuntu/. Additionally, there is a simple Terraform setup for deploying an instance on GCP based on the Packer image. It requires some small changes before being applied - see terraform/.

The suggested workflow is:

• Clone this repository
• Test Wordpress locally
• Use Vagrant to provision an Ubuntu VM
  • This is not a mandatory step, but it won't cost you anything compared to making changes directly to an instance on GCP/AWS
• Create a Packer image and deploy

Contents

• Architecture
• Testing Wordpress locally
• Running on mainnet
• Setting up HTTPS
• Troubleshooting

Architecture

There are 5 major components running in tandem to make the store work out of the box.

1. Bitcoind

• Testnet full node that C-Lightning relies on (see below how to switch to mainnet)
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

2. C-Lightning

• Lightning Network node
• https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning

3. Lightning Charge

• REST API for Wordpress to interact with C-Lightning
• https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning-charge, https://github.com/ElementsProject/woocommerce-gateway-lightning

4. Wordpress (plus an Nginx reverse-proxy)

• A generic site has been included in data/wp/ with a few fake products and the minimum plugins needed for the site - WooCommerce + Lightning Charge Gateway
• https://codex.wordpress.org/

5. MySQL db for Wordpress

• There is a data/db/ included as well to make the Wordpress site work properly (there shouldn't be any secrets in the provided dir)
• https://dev.mysql.com/doc/

You don't need to rely on the current setup. It is meant to get you started with a basic store, which will require some modifications based on your needs. Make sure to change all the default passwords, tokens, etc.

Testing and modifying Wordpress locally

If you want to play around and/or setup Wordpress locally, you can just run make setup. Just make sure you have docker and docker-compose installed. The docker-compose file is a direct replica of the way the Wordpress, MySQL and Nginx systemd services are setup in the user-data file. Also, the included data/wp/ and data/db/ directories are mounted in the containers.

After the containers have been setup, you can access the site and login at http://localhost:8080/wp-admin/ with user: lightning, pw: some-secure-password!. You can add products, logos, additional plugins, change themes, etc. at this point. All changes will persist in the Wordpress and database mounted directories.

Switching to mainnet

You will need to make these changes in order to run your Bitcoin and Lightning nodes on mainnet:

• Change to testnet=0 in the bitcoin.conf
• Change to network=bitcoin in the lightning.conf

Warning: Be mindful of reusing the same bitcoin/lightning directories when/if you're switching between testnet and mainnet. It's not always a great idea and it may result in loss of funds on mainnet! It's best practice to wipe the lightning directory when switching networks, otherwise C-Lightning won't start, so be careful when you're switching networks and when you're deleting/renaming directories.

Setting up HTTPS with Certbot

Certbot has been installed by the prereqs.sh script. You can install a cert by creating a challenge file in /extra/data/wp/.well-known/acme-challenge/challenge_file by running these commands and following the on-screen instructions:

certbot register --agree-tos -m [email protected]
certbot certonly --manual -d example.com

During the cert creation, you'll get a prompt that's similar to this:

Create a file containing just this data:

eEoRsQAiP4k_obCm5aLY3GGOioIw2il4p4JHnvW8CFc.l00bktMdD9DBdubjjGznSAuSQTo1HVuUAIw-5HQzbsI

And make it available on your web server at this URL:

http://example.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/eEoRsQAiP4k_obCm5aLY3GGOioIw2il4p4JHnvW8CFc

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So, create that file in /extra/data/wp/.well-known/acme-challenge by:

echo "eEoRsQAiP4k_obCm5aLY3GGOioIw2il4p4JHnvW8CFc.l00bktMdD9DBdubjjGznSAuSQTo1HVuUAIw-5HQzbsI" > /extra/data/wp/.well-known/acme-challenge/eEoRsQAiP4k_obCm5aLY3GGOioIw2il4p4JHnvW8CFc

After you get the "Congratulations!" response from Certbot, you'll have to uncomment the SSL server block in /home/bs/nginx.conf, update the /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service with your domain and finally restart the Nginx service systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart nginx. You should have HTTPS setup now.

Cert renewal:

Add this line to /etc/crontab:

0  */12 * * *   root    test -x /usr/bin/certbot && { date; certbot renew --preferred-challenges dns; systemctl restart nginx; } >> /tmp/debug 2>&1

Note: If you don't want to run HTTPS for some reason or you're just testing things, you can take the location directives from the SSL server block and put them in the http server block. After moving those, you can delete or leave the SSL server block commented out.

Troubleshooting

Things to check if something's not working as expected:

• Check that all 6 services are running

sudo systemctl status bitcoin lightning charge mysql wp nginx | grep active | wc -l

• Double-check wp-setup and try setting up wp-config.php again

bash /home/bs/wp-setup.sh

• Play around with the Wordpress-CLI

You can install/uninstall themes, plugins, modify the MySQL db and much more (make sure the wp-cli service has been started - systemctl start wp-cli).

docker exec -it wp-cli bash
wp --help

TODO

• Don't include wp/db data in repo directly
• Make stuff more idempotent
• AWS AMI
• CoreOS version
• Create a config file, which will be used by a bootstrap script; or something similar
• Automate most of the deployment/provisioning process