Unable to pay extreme multipart payment in tests

[Lagrang3]

As a follow up to issue #7563, I have tested renepay on the same topology that @daywalker90 proposed for testing getroutes. It turned out the payment failed with failed to find a feasible flow due to a sequence of HTLC failures on a remote channel that should have had enough liquidity.

To reproduce the problem I tried the following test using only sendpay. The payment flow is: l1 -> l2 -> l3, where there are more than one channels connecting l1->l2 and l2->l3.

When trying to send a 4 part payment with the following routes

• part 1 with 350k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 400k,
• part 2 with 250k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 300k,
• part 3 with 150k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 200k,
• part 4 with 50k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 100k.

One or more payment parts always fail at the l2->l3 hop with CHANNEL_ERR_CHANNEL_CAPACITY_EXCEEDED seen at l2 logs.

Another simpler case that fails as well is:

• part 1 with 200k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 400k,
• part 2 with 200k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 300k.

If instead I try making a single part payment:

• 350k in the route l1->l2->l3 over a couple of channels with capacity 400k. The attempt succeeds.

def get_local_channel_by_id(node, chanid):
    peerchannels = node.rpc.listpeerchannels()['channels']
    if not peerchannels:
        return None
    for c in peerchannels:
        if c['channel_id']==chanid:
            return c
    return None

def start_channels(connections):
    nodes = list()
    for src, dst, fundamount in connections:
        nodes.append(src)
        nodes.append(dst)
        src.rpc.connect(dst.info["id"], "localhost", dst.port)

    bitcoind = nodes[0].bitcoin
    # If we got here, we want to fund channels
    for src, dst, fundamount in connections:
        addr = src.rpc.newaddr()["bech32"]
        bitcoind.rpc.sendtoaddress(addr, (fundamount + 1000000) / 10**8)

    bitcoind.generate_block(1)
    sync_blockheight(bitcoind, nodes)
    txids = []
    chan_ids = []
    for src, dst, fundamount in connections:
        reply = src.rpc.fundchannel(dst.info["id"], fundamount, announce=True, minconf=0)
        txids.append(reply["txid"])
        chan_ids.append(reply["channel_id"])

    # Confirm all channels and wait for them to become usable
    bitcoind.generate_block(1, wait_for_mempool=txids)
    scids = []
    for con, mychan_id in zip(connections, chan_ids):
        src = con[0]
        wait_for(lambda: get_local_channel_by_id(src, mychan_id)['state'] == "CHANNELD_NORMAL")
        scids.append(get_local_channel_by_id(src, mychan_id)['short_channel_id'])

    # Make sure they have all seen block so they don't complain about
    # the coming gossip messages
    sync_blockheight(bitcoind, nodes)
    bitcoind.generate_block(5)

    # Make sure everyone sees all channels, all other nodes
    for n in nodes:
        for scid in scids:
            n.wait_channel_active(scid)

    # Make sure we have all node announcements, too
    for n in nodes:
        for n2 in nodes:
            wait_for(
                lambda: "alias" in only_one(n.rpc.listnodes(n2.info["id"])["nodes"])
            )
    return chan_ids

def test_channel_reserve(node_factory):
    def direction(node1, node2):
        return 0 if node1.info['id']<node2.info['id'] else 1
    
    opts = {"disable-mpp": None, "fee-base": 0, "fee-per-satoshi": 0, "cltv-delta": 6}
    l1, l2, l3 = node_factory.get_nodes(3, opts=opts)
    
    chan_ids = start_channels(
        [
            (l1, l2, 400_000),
            (l2, l3, 400_000),
            (l1, l2, 300_000),
            (l2, l3, 300_000),
            (l1, l2, 200_000),
            (l2, l3, 200_000),
            (l1, l2, 100_000),
            (l2, l3, 100_000),
        ]
    )
    
    # we should be able to send these four parts:
    # nparts = 4
    # route_amounts = ["350000sat", "250000sat", "150000sat", "50000sat"]
    # instead the test fails even with these:
    nparts = 2
    route_amounts = ["201000sat", "200000sat", "150000sat", "50000sat"]
    total_msat = sum( [ Millisatoshi(a) for a in route_amounts[:nparts] ])
    
    # Test succeeds if we are able to pay this invoice
    inv = l3.rpc.call("invoice", {"amount_msat": total_msat,
        "label":"inv","description":"inv","cltv":10})
    inv_decode = l1.rpc.decode(inv["bolt11"])
    
    # Shared data by every route we will construct: l1->l2->l3
    route = [{"id": l2.info["id"],
        "direction": direction(l1,l2),
        "delay": 16,
        "style": "tlv"},
        {"id": l3.info["id"],
        "direction": direction(l2,l3),
        "delay": 10,
        "style": "tlv"}]

    # Send every part with sendpay
    for part in range(nparts):
        this_part_msat = Millisatoshi(route_amounts[part])
        chan1 = get_local_channel_by_id(l1, chan_ids[part*2])
        chan2 = get_local_channel_by_id(l2, chan_ids[part*2+1])
        
        route[0]["channel"] = chan1["short_channel_id"]
        route[1]["channel"] = chan2["short_channel_id"]
        route[0]["amount_msat"] = route[1]["amount_msat"] = this_part_msat
        
        assert chan1["spendable_msat"]>=this_part_msat
        assert chan2["spendable_msat"]>=this_part_msat
        
        l1.rpc.call(
            "sendpay",
            {"route": route,
             "payment_hash": inv["payment_hash"],
             "payment_secret": inv["payment_secret"],
             "amount_msat": total_msat,
             "groupid": 1,
             "partid": part+1,},
        )
    l1.wait_for_htlcs()
    
    # Are we happy?
    waitsendpay_response = l1.rpc.call("waitsendpay",{"payment_hash":
        inv["payment_hash"], "partid": 1, "groupid": 1})
    receipt = only_one(l3.rpc.listinvoices("inv")["invoices"])
    assert receipt["status"] == "paid"
    assert receipt["amount_received_msat"] == total_msat

[Lagrang3]

I think the problem is with the parallel channels. On l2 channeld is only seeing one channel with his peer l1.

I can see that lightningd's peer structure has a list of channels (defined in lightningd/peer_control.h), but it seems that channeld's peer structure has only one channel (defined in channeld/channeld.c). Keep looking...

UPD: There's one channeld instance for every channel. So maybe lightningd is sending the HTLC request to the wrong subdaemon?

As a matter of fact in the logs:

035d2b1192dfba134e10e540875d366ebc8bc353d5aa766b80c090b39c3a5d885d-channeld-chan#2: Adding HTLC 0 amount=501000000msat cltv=119 gave CHANNEL_ERR_ADD_OK
...
035d2b1192dfba134e10e540875d366ebc8bc353d5aa766b80c090b39c3a5d885d-channeld-chan#2: Adding HTLC 1 amount=500000000msat cltv=119 gave CHANNEL_ERR_CHANNEL_CAPACITY_EXCEEDED

both HTLC requests go to the same channeld-chan#2, one should have gone to channeld-chan#2 and the other to channeld-chan#4.

[Lagrang3]

There is a channel selection in lightningd before forwarding: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/9d88ce3b592ca42a01104758313b9b2806d40230/lightningd/peer_htlcs.c#L1215

Is that a good idea, why wouldn't we try to forward right on the channels we have been requested to?

Clearly in this case that function is not selecting the best channel.

[Lagrang3]

Though non-strict forwarding is allowed: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/04-onion-routing.md#non-strict-forwarding