n8n/docs/configuration.md

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 is 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's the case for executions that succeeded and for the ones that failed. The 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: Does not save anything (recommended if a workflow runs 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, this makes sure that the crash of one execution does 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. For example, if you do not want that people can write data to the disk with the "n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile" node and that they cannot 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 who started n8n. Additional folders can be defined with 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 the 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

SSL

It is possible to start n8n with SSL enabled by supplying a certificate to use:

export N8N_PROTOCOL=https
export N8N_SSL_KEY=/data/certs/server.key
export N8N_SSL_CERT=/data/certs/server.pem

Timezone

The timezone is set by default to "America/New_York". For instance, it is used by the Cron node to know at what time the workflow should be started. To set a different default timezone simply set GENERIC_TIMEZONE to the appropriate value. For example, if you want to set the timezone to 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) gets saved by default in the subfolder .n8n of the user who 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. However, if n8n runs behind a reverse proxy that would not work. That's because n8n runs 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 so that it can be displayed correctly in the Editor UI and even more important is that the correct webhook URLs get registred with the external services.

export WEBHOOK_TUNNEL_URL="https://n8n.example.com/"

Configuration via file

It is also possible to configure n8n using a configuration file.

It is not necessary to define all values but only the ones that should be different from the defaults.

If needed multiple files can also be supplied to. For example, have generic base settings and some specific ones depending on the environment.

The path to the JSON configuration file to use can be set using the environment variable N8N_CONFIG_FILES.

# Single file
export N8N_CONFIG_FILES=/folder/my-config.json

# Multiple files can be comma-separated
export N8N_CONFIG_FILES=/folder/my-config.json,/folder/production.json

A possible configuration file could look like this:

{
	"executions": {
		"process": "main",
		"saveDataOnSuccess": "none"
	},
	"generic": {
		"timezone": "Europe/Berlin"
	},
	"security": {
		"basicAuth": {
			"active": true,
			"user": "frank",
			"password": "some-secure-password"
		}
	},
	"nodes": {
		"exclude": "[\"n8n-nodes-base.executeCommand\",\"n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile\"]"
	}
}

All possible values which can be set and their defaults can be found here:

https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/packages/cli/config/index.ts