subservers: fail LiT startup when integrated sub-server boot fails by ffranr · Pull Request #1183 · lightninglabs/lightning-terminal

ffranr · 2025-12-02T20:22:15Z

Treat integrated sub-servers as fatal to startup and return an error if any fail to start.
Propagate integrated sub-server startup errors to LiT so it stops launching and records the failure status.
Update docs to reflect integrated sub-servers are now critical to startup.

gemini-code-assist · 2025-12-02T20:22:35Z

Summary of Changes

Hello @ffranr, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request significantly enhances the reliability of the LiT startup sequence by elevating the status of integrated sub-servers to critical. Previously, LiT could continue operating even if some of its integrated sub-servers failed to launch. Now, any failure in an integrated sub-server's boot process will cause LiT itself to cease its startup, ensuring that the system only reaches an operational state when all essential integrated components are functioning correctly. This change provides a more robust and predictable initialization experience.

Highlights

Critical Integrated Sub-Server Startup: Integrated sub-servers are now treated as critical components for LiT (Lightning Terminal) startup. If any integrated sub-server fails to initialize, LiT will now abort its launch process.
Error Propagation: The StartIntegratedServers function in the sub-server manager has been updated to return an error if any integrated sub-server fails to start, allowing LiT to properly handle and propagate these failures.
LiT Startup Robustness: LiT's main startup routine (terminal.go) now explicitly checks for errors returned by StartIntegratedServers and will set an errored status and halt its own startup if such failures occur.
Documentation Update: Comments within the subservers/interface.go file have been updated to reflect the new critical nature of integrated sub-servers during LiT startup.

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Code Review

This pull request modifies the startup logic to treat integrated sub-server startup failures as fatal. The changes correctly propagate errors from StartIntegratedServers up to the main start function, causing LiT to fail on startup as intended. The documentation has also been updated to reflect this new behavior. The implementation is sound, but I have one suggestion to improve the consistency of error handling.

terminal.go

ViktorT-11

Thanks for this @ffranr 🙏!

In addition to the feedback I've commented below, this new behaviour definitely needs itest coverage.

I think we actually started working on this at the same time, and I have local branch with draft code implementing this + itest coverage. If you want to, i can clean that up and push it so that you can cherry-pick that to make it more simple for you. Let me know if that'd be helpful :).

subservers/manager.go

terminal.go

ellemouton

havent actually looked at the diff here yet, just want to make a note in case: we should just make sure that the daemon still runs & ie, that the status server still gets served

subservers/manager.go

ViktorT-11

Thanks for the updates 🚀! Leaving some additional feedback in addition to @ellemouton's feedback.

itest/litd_mode_integrated_test.go

subservers/manager.go

terminal.go

ViktorT-11

Thanks for the updates 🙏! Looking better, but commenting of a few lines I think you should just remove to address some previously mentioned feedback.

terminal.go

- Fail LiT startup if any critical integrated sub-server fails to start. - Log non-critical sub-server startup errors without aborting startup.

- Ensure critical integrated sub-servers initialize first. - Introduce alphabetical sorting for consistent order across startup runs.

ViktorT-11

After testing this PR locally, I’ve realized that this comment isn’t really addressable with how litd is currently designed:
#1183 (comment)

The reason is that shutting down lnd will always trigger the shutdownInterceptor.ShutdownChannel() to be sent over, which in turn also shuts down litd. This behavior stems from the single-interceptor pattern we currently use in litd, which we eventually want to move away from.

As a result, I don’t think it’s possible to keep litd’s status endpoint up and running while still shutting down lnd in response to critical sub-server startup errors.

Given that, I believe the behavior introduced by this PR is effectively the best we can do until the single-interceptor pattern is addressed.

@ellemouton, do you think it’s critical that litd, and therefore the status endpoint, remains up when critical sub-servers fail on startup (which also causes lnd to shut down)? If so, we’ll need to address the single-interceptor issue first. Otherwise, can we ship this as-is for now and tackle the interceptor issue at a later stage?

itest/litd_mode_integrated_test.go

ViktorT-11 · 2026-01-09T11:50:22Z

itest/litd_mode_integrated_test.go

+	case <-time.After(15 * time.Second):
+		t.Fatalf("expected tapd startup failure to be reported")
+	}
+


Depending on @ellemouton's response to my broader question in the main review comment, we likely want to expand the test code here, to ensure that the status endpoint & lnd node is at the state we expect it to be.

Issue to track interceptor decoupling: #1201

- Introduce tests for critical and non-critical sub-server startup behavior. - Ensure failures in critical servers stop startup, while non-critical failures are tolerated.

ellemouton · 2026-01-14T09:24:40Z

@ellemouton, do you think it’s critical that litd, and therefore the status endpoint, remains up when critical sub-servers fail on startup (which also causes lnd to shut down)?

I think we need to bring in @jamaljsr & @levmi in on this discussion since the main reason for the status endpoint is to provide context to TW re why things are not starting up. The alternative is: just dont fully start up meaning that LNC sessions wont work & users will just see that they cannot connect to their node

jamaljsr · 2026-01-14T14:14:13Z

@ellemouton Thanks for the ping on this potential change.

I've read through the convo here and am still unclear as to what the behavior change will be versus what we have now in master. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but currently litd shuts down if lnd is shut down. Running lncli stop will bring down lnd and the litd process as well. Will this behavior differ with the changes in this PR?

In an ideal world, it would be nice if litd (and status server) were available even when lnd is not running, but I don't believe we have that functionality today, so it's ok if we don't have it after this PR.

lightninglabs-deploy · 2026-02-18T16:16:42Z

@ziggie1984: review reminder
@ellemouton: review reminder
@ffranr, remember to re-request review from reviewers when ready

ffranr self-assigned this Dec 2, 2025

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ffranr force-pushed the wip/fail-startup-on-subserver-err branch from 57ee325 to 86e8ec5 Compare December 4, 2025 13:21

ffranr mentioned this pull request Dec 4, 2025

[feature]: use future/promise design for interaction with lnd lightninglabs/taproot-assets#1893

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ffranr force-pushed the wip/fail-startup-on-subserver-err branch 2 times, most recently from c910257 to 65e4e0f Compare January 6, 2026 17:19

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ffranr added 2 commits January 8, 2026 16:20

subservers: treat critical startup failures as fatal

7341bdb

- Fail LiT startup if any critical integrated sub-server fails to start. - Log non-critical sub-server startup errors without aborting startup.

subservers: sort sub-servers deterministically during integrated startup

19728cd

- Ensure critical integrated sub-servers initialize first. - Introduce alphabetical sorting for consistent order across startup runs.

ffranr force-pushed the wip/fail-startup-on-subserver-err branch from 65e4e0f to 3368bcf Compare January 8, 2026 16:20

ffranr requested a review from ViktorT-11 January 8, 2026 16:39

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ffranr added 4 commits January 13, 2026 19:16

itest: add integrated-mode fail-fast test for tapd startup errors

d787f25

itest: add integrated-mode non-critical sub-server startup failure test

66abec6

subservers: add unit tests for integrated server startup logic

9884fdc

- Introduce tests for critical and non-critical sub-server startup behavior. - Ensure failures in critical servers stop startup, while non-critical failures are tolerated.

docs: add release note

05b8da3

ffranr force-pushed the wip/fail-startup-on-subserver-err branch from 3368bcf to 05b8da3 Compare January 13, 2026 19:29

ffranr mentioned this pull request Jan 14, 2026

Decouple litd and lnd Shutdown Interceptors #1201

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