5.5 KiB
Configuration
It is possible to change some of the n8n defaults via special environment variables. The ones that currently exist are:
Publish
Sets how n8n should be made available.
# The port n8n should be made available on
N8N_PORT=5678
# This ones are currently only important for the webhook URL creation.
# So if "WEBHOOK_TUNNEL_URL" got set they do get ignored. It is however
# encouraged to set them correctly anyway in case they will become
# important in the future.
N8N_PROTOCOL=https
N8N_HOST=n8n.example.com
Base URL
Tells the frontend how to reach the REST API of the backend.
export VUE_APP_URL_BASE_API="https://n8n.example.com/"
Execution Data Manual Runs
n8n creates a random encryption key automatically on the first launch and saves
it in the ~/.n8n folder. That key gets used to encrypt the credentials before
they get saved to the database. It is also possible to overwrite that key and
set it via an environment variable.
export N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY="<SOME RANDOM STRING>"
Execution Data Manual Runs
Normally executions which got started via the Editor UI will not be saved as they are normally only for testing and debugging. That default can be changed with this environment variable.
export EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_MANUAL_EXECUTIONS=true
This setting can also be overwritten on a per workflow basis in the workflow settings in the Editor UI.
Execution Data Error/Success
When a workflow gets executed it will save the result in the database. That is the case for executions that did succeed and for the ones that failed. That default behavior can be changed like this:
export EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_ERROR=none
export EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_SUCCESS=none
Possible values are:
- all: Saves all data
- none: Do not save anything (recommended if a workflow runs a very often and/or processes a lot of data, set up "Error Workflow" instead)
These settings can also be overwritten on a per workflow basis in the workflow settings in the Editor UI.
Execute In Same Process
All workflows get executed in their own separate process. This ensures that all CPU cores get used and that they do not block each other on CPU intensive tasks. Additionally does the crash of one execution not take down the whole application. The disadvantage is, however, that it slows down the start-time considerably and uses much more memory. So in case, the workflows are not CPU intensive and they have to start very fast it is possible to run them all directly in the main-process with this setting.
export EXECUTIONS_PROCESS=main
Exclude Nodes
It is possible to not allow users to use nodes of a specific node type. If you, for example, do not want that people can write data to disk with the "n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile" node and can not execute commands with the "n8n-nodes-base.executeCommand" node you can set the following:
export NODES_EXCLUDE="[\"n8n-nodes-base.executeCommand\",\"n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile\"]"
Custom Nodes Location
Every user can add custom nodes that get loaded by n8n on startup. The default
location is in the subfolder .n8n/custom of the user which started n8n.
Additional folders can be defined via an environment variable.
export N8N_CUSTOM_EXTENSIONS="/home/jim/n8n/custom-nodes;/data/n8n/nodes"
Use built-in and external modules in Function-Nodes
For security reasons, importing modules is restricted by default in Function-Nodes.
It is, however, possible to lift that restriction for built-in and external modules by
setting the following environment variables:
NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_BUILTIN: For builtin modules
NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_EXTERNAL: For external modules sourced from n8n/node_modules directory. External module support is disabled when env variable is not set.
# Allows usage of all builtin modules
export NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_BUILTIN=*
# Allows usage of only crypto
export NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_BUILTIN=crypto
# Allows usage of only crypto and fs
export NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_BUILTIN=crypto,fs
# Allow usage of external npm modules. Wildcard matching is not supported.
export NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_EXTERNAL=moment,lodash
Timezone
The timezone is set by default to "America/New_York". It gets for example used by the
Cron-Node to know at what time the workflow should be started at. To set a different
default timezone simply set GENERIC_TIMEZONE to the appropriate value like for example
for Berlin (Germany):
export GENERIC_TIMEZONE="Europe/Berlin"
You can find the name of your timezone here: https://momentjs.com/timezone/
User Folder
User-specific data like the encryption key, SQLite database file, and
the ID of the tunnel (if used) get by default saved in the subfolder
.n8n of the user which started n8n. It is possible to overwrite the
user-folder via an environment variable.
export N8N_USER_FOLDER="/home/jim/n8n"
Webhook URL
The webhook URL will normally be created automatically by combining
N8N_PROTOCOL, N8N_HOST and N8N_PORT. If n8n runs, however, behind a
reverse proxy that would not work. Because n8n does for example run internally
on port 5678 but is exposed to the web via the reverse proxy on port 443. In
that case, it is important to set the webhook URL manually that it can be
displayed correctly in the Editor UI and even more important that the correct
webhook URLs get registred with external services.
export WEBHOOK_TUNNEL_URL="https://n8n.example.com/"