How can I force a connection from my private node to my public node?

Question

I have two nodes, one public, and other in private mode (using --private-mode --no-bootstrap-peers --bootstrap-threshold=1 --connections 1 --peer <PUBLIC_NODE_IP>:<PORT>). The problem is that the private node doesn't have any active connections.

Things to consider:
1. I have marked as trusted my private node in the public one (using trust peer and trust address).
2. Running p2p stat in the public node doesn't show the private node's IP in the Known Points' list. But it does show the private node's identity in Known Peers' list.
3. In the private node is the other way around: it shows the public node's IP in Known Points, but not in Known Peers.

Am I missing something? Is there a way of forcing the public node to prioritize to connect to the private one? Do I have to do something to facilitate discovery between these nodes?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The --peer= argument allows to specify peers that node should connect to. This is how you get private nodes to connect to specific peers. It takes an ip and port.

This is from running tezos-node run --help.

--peer=ADDR:PORT
           A peer to bootstrap the network from. Can be used several times to
           add several peers.