Host n8n in a server where apache is also running

Questions
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1

Hello, I want to install n8n in a server that is also running a LAMP stack.

I tried to follow the instructions here but I get (quite understandably) the following error

ERROR: for n8n_traefik_1 Cannot start service traefik: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint n8n_traefik_1 (55f4c1c51c8d2e1ea8186e82c36e7fc86210db397b35e9f9ab11e8ae92c22d1b): Error starting userland proxy: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:443: bind: address already in use

That’s expected since httpd is running on port 443. So I opened the 2020 port in my firewall and tried to change the port to run n8n on docker-compose.yml. Changed 443 to 2020 in the whole document.

However if I go to my browser and try to go to mydomain.com:2020 or n8n.mydomain.com:2020 or even myserverip:2020 it still doesn’t work.

And now I’m not sure if I set up the docker-compose.yml correctly or how to set the .env file (starting from the sample version available in the instructions) to allow for a URL-with-a-port type of configuration (or if there is a way that I missed to make apache and n8n work together)

Thanks in advance

2

Welcome to the community @nguy!

Another port than 443 will sadly not work. The reason is that it is the default SSH port and Lets Encrypt will not accept any other one:

So the only way to make it work is to get a different server or to convert your existing application to docker and serve it then also via traefik.

At least if you want to use the docker-compose setup with Lets Encrypt. You could obviously anytime run n8n differently like simply npm install it or start only the n8n container via HTTP (not recommended and will cause problems with many services) or buy an SSL certificate and then add it directly to n8n like described here:

3

Seems like the DOCs you’re quyoting there no longer exist. This discussion is still relevant, so when you say add a SSL certificate directly to n8n, you mean through the following environment variables?
N8N_SSL_KEY and N8N_SSL_CERT?

4

Hey @fogolin,

You got it, What I would do though is set up Apache as a reverse proxy and handle the SSL/TLS there which may be easier unless you know your way around certificates.

1 Like
5

I have the same problem, how can I configure the Apache server as a reverse proxy?

6

Hey @JoelGaribay,

I have never tried with the Apache web server but looking at the documentation for it assuming you have mod_proxy installed it should be a case of updating your Apache config to add something like the below, There could be more needed but it would be worth starting with that.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ProxyPreserveHost On

    ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:5678/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:5678/
</VirtualHost>
1 Like
7

Thanks.

Ready, I already created a new virtualhost pointing to port 80 with the configuration you mention, however I can’t get it to open N8N, it opens my main website

I already activated the Apache proxy and proxy_http modules

Note: I currently have a website with wordpress in domain.com, it is configured in a virtualhost with port 443, when opening n8n.domain.com it opens my website

What else could I do?

8

Did you add ServerName or/and ServerAlias to your config?

Here’s an example of one of mine configurations with n8n.

<VirtualHost _default_:443>
  SSLEngine on

  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyRequests Off
  ServerName n8n.let-the-work-flow.com
  ProxyPass / http://localhost:5678/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:5678/

</VirtualHost>
2 Likes
9

Thanks for your answer, yes, I just have it very similar.

I have a question, I have the main website with port 443, is there a problem if the new virtualhost (the one from n8n) is in :80?

<VirtualHost *:80>

        ProxyPreserveHost On
        ProxyRequests Off

        ServerAdmin [email protected]
        ServerName n8n.domain.com
        ServerAlias n8n.domain.com

        ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:5678/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:5678/

</VirtualHost>
10

Thank you very much for your input, I was able to fix it.

My problem was that CloudFlare was blocking my subdomain (from what I understood cloudflare had put a proxy on it automatically and it must be free of that)

Note: For those who are making the VirtualHost with port 80, they need to enter only with HTTP, however, the ideal would be to have it in port 443 so that the entry is with HTTPS.

It is 100% recommended that it be through port 443

All the best

1 Like