Channel stuck on PENDING CLOSE

[mathieu-gilardet]

Hi LND,

I have an issue with a channel stuck on PENDING CLOSE, and would like some advice on how to proceed.

Setup

• BTCPay: 1.11.4
• RTL: 0.14.0
• LND: v0.16.4-beta

Context / What I did:

• On RTL, I clicked on close channel, and set the fees as 3 target blocks.
• I've had a message saying 'backup successfull'
• But the channel remained on OPEN state, and went INACTIVE
• Reading, about inactive channels on your issues page, someone suggested to the restart the LND deamon, which i did.
• Then the channel went PENDING CLOSE, which is the current state.
• But the shown transactions hashes have not been published on the mempool.

So, before rushing everthing and making mistakes,

• Could you please advise me, on what you think is the best strategy to close the channel? From what I have read, I am guessing force close, but I would appreciate hearing it from you.

• If force close is the way, then how to issue the command?

here is the --help on closechannel:

USAGE:
   lncli closechannel [command options] funding_txid [output_index]

I am affraid since I used an inbound Lightning Liquidy Provider, that a don't know the funding tx hash, and pendingchannels doesn't show it...

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much!

Outputs

# lncli pendingchannels
{
    "total_limbo_balance": "25324955",
    "pending_open_channels": [
    ],
    "pending_closing_channels": [
    ],
    "pending_force_closing_channels": [
    ],
    "waiting_close_channels": [
        {
            "channel": {
                "remote_node_pub": "<my-lighting-node-id>",
                "channel_point": "9364182a16a7ba734e2851afe3216051e75000d152db9b68abb945c33dc2e40c:1",
                "capacity": "49964410",
                "local_balance": "25324955",
                "remote_balance": "24636098",
                "local_chan_reserve_sat": "499644",
                "remote_chan_reserve_sat": "499644",
                "initiator": "INITIATOR_REMOTE",
                "commitment_type": "ANCHORS",
                "num_forwarding_packages": "0",
                "chan_status_flags": "ChanStatusCoopBroadcasted|ChanStatusLocalCloseInitiator",
                "private": false
            },
            "limbo_balance": "25324955",
            "commitments": {
                "local_txid": "94e629347e4d01ab75c50b83fd1aaf69d6b4e4a0ffaa57828bed1e0ec69a8380",
                "remote_txid": "2a61d1396b2d7c88b658b5541e3236487d72ff5e0785f664f6c043d3aef16169",
                "remote_pending_txid": "",
                "local_commit_fee_sat": "2696",
                "remote_commit_fee_sat": "2696",
                "remote_pending_commit_fee_sat": "0"
            },
            "closing_txid": ""
        }
    ]
}

[guggero]

This can sometimes happen if your node and your peer can't agree on a closing fee. You can try again by disconnecting from that peer and re-connecting, then attempt to normally close the channel.
If that doesn't work, the channel_point shown in the closing channel list is the funding transaction ID and the output index, separated by a colon. So if you want to force close, the command would in your case be: lncli closechannel --force --funding_txid 9364182a16a7ba734e2851afe3216051e75000d152db9b68abb945c33dc2e40c --output_index 1

[mathieu-gilardet]

Thank you guggero for your fast reply,

• I've tried disconnecting then reconnecting peer, but the channel was still in pending close state, so I did not see any way to retry a soft close.
• Then I've tried a force close as advised: I am happy to see my tx on the BC.

I had seen on some posts suggestions to use channel_point as funding_txid but wasn't sure... Thank you very much for your confirmation and in general your assistance!

Please have a nice day :)