Postgres support in LND

With the introduction of the kvdb interface, LND can support multiple database backends. One of the supported backends is Postgres. This document describes how it can be configured.

Building LND with postgres support

Since lnd v0.14.1-beta the necessary build tags to enable postgres support are already enabled by default. The default release binaries or docker images can be used. To build from source, simply run:

$  make install

Configuring Postgres for LND

In order for LND to run on Postgres, an empty database should already exist. A database can be created via the usual ways (psql, pgadmin, etc). A user with access to this database is also required.

Creation of a schema and the tables is handled by LND automatically.

Configuring LND for Postgres

LND is configured for Postgres through the following configuration options:

db.backend=postgres to select the Postgres backend.
db.postgres.dsn=... to set the database connection string that includes database, user and password.
db.postgres.timeout=... to set the connection timeout. If not set, no timeout applies.

Example as follows:

[db]
db.backend=postgres
db.postgres.dsn=postgresql://dbuser:dbpass@127.0.0.1:5432/dbname
db.postgres.timeout=0

Connection timeout is disabled, to account for situations where the database might be slow for unexpected reasons.

Important note about replication

In case a replication architecture is planned, streaming replication should be avoided, as the master does not verify the replica is indeed identical, but it will only forward the edits queue, and let the slave catch up autonomously; synchronous mode, albeit slower, is paramount for lnd data integrity across the copies, as it will finalize writes only after the slave confirmed successful replication.

What is in the database?

At present, the Postgres Database functions as a Key-Value Store, much as Bolt DB does. Some values are TLV-encoded while others are not. More schema will be introduced over time. At present the schema for each table/relation is simply: key, value, parent_id, id, sequence.

List of tables/relations:

              List of relations
 Schema |       Name       | Type  |  Owner   
--------+------------------+-------+----------
 public | channeldb_kv     | table | lndadmin
 public | decayedlogdb_kv  | table | lndadmin
 public | macaroondb_kv    | table | lndadmin
 public | towerclientdb_kv | table | lndadmin
 public | towerserverdb_kv | table | lndadmin
 public | walletdb_kv      | table | lndadmin

Notably, Invoice DB is maintained separately alongside the LND node.

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