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Configuration
It is possible to change some of the n8n defaults via special environment variables. The ones that currently exist are:
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.
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"
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"