Disk Full on Self-Hosted n8n Instance – Help Needed!

Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an urgent issue with my self-hosted n8n instance on a DigitalOcean droplet. Suddenly, my disk filled up completely, and now I can’t even access the server via SSH. When I try, I get the error: All configured authentication methods failed.

I’ve tried troubleshooting but I’m stuck. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

  1. I attempted to SSH into the server, but authentication keeps failing.
  2. I opened the DigitalOcean console, but I’m unsure what to delete to free up space safely.
  3. I suspect n8n’s execution logs or database might be consuming a lot of disk space, but I don’t know how to clear them effectively.

Has anyone else encountered this issue? How can I regain access to my server and free up enough space to get everything running again?

If it helps, here are some additional details about my setup:

  • n8n is self-hosted and running on a DigitalOcean droplet.
  • I’m using SQLite as the database.
  • I haven’t set up log rotation or automatic execution data pruning.

Any advice, step-by-step instructions, or links to relevant resources would be greatly appreciated. I’m nervous about accidentally deleting something important or making the situation worse.

Thanks in advance for your help!

2

It looks like your topic is missing some important information. Could you provide the following if applicable.

  • n8n version:
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
  • Operating system:
3

Hi @Rohit_Gurav

If you’re using SQLite, the disk space of any pruned data isn’t automatically freed up but rather reused for future executions data. You can run the VACUUM operation or set DB_SQLITE_VACUUM_ON_STARTUP as an environment variable.

I would also recommend to set up automatic data pruning:

As for the SSH access issue, I would say this is related to DigitalOcean and I’m afraid I can’t provide much help there

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