Migrate SQLITE db from n8n selft hosted npm version to cloud server using docker

Questions
1

Hello, I have too much information on my local self hosted n8n environment, i need some help to migrate my npm version of n8n to a docker version hosted on Hostinger. I wanted to grab the sqlite version that is 5gigs and put it on the new server but somehow it is not working. Can anyone help with this, i don’t know what i need to change to make this work. It should be a fairly easy process. Thanks for your help

Information on your n8n setup

  • Debug info

    core

    • n8nVersion: 2.17.8
    • platform: docker (self-hosted)
    • nodeJsVersion: 24.14.1
    • nodeEnv: production
    • database: sqlite
    • executionMode: regular
    • concurrency: -1
    • license: enterprise (production)
    • consumerId: 50be8888-66f8-440c-85ed-37e09dd1d11d

    storage

    • success: all
    • error: all
    • progress: false
    • manual: true
    • binaryMode: filesystem

    pruning

    • enabled: true
    • maxAge: 336 hours
    • maxCount: 10000 executions

    client

    • userAgent: mozilla/5.0 (windows nt 10.0; win64; x64) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/147.0.0.0 safari/537.36
    • isTouchDevice: false

    security

    • secureCookie: false

    Generated at: 2026-04-28T04:12:13.762Z

3

Define “not working“. Any error? What did you do?

4

I do not know where the logs are writing to, it just fails to start the container. I won’t boot. I just copied the entire n8n folder from the old server and put it in the new one.

5

npm and Docker are not the same. You do not just “copy“ the whole folder.

What does docker ps on Hostinger show?

6

it shows this:

CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
403ce593e7d4 docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n “tini – /docker-ent…” 59 minutes ago Up 12 minutes 0.0.0.0:5678->5678/tcp, [::]:5678->5678/tcp n8n-oq2u-n8n-1
259a19ea6b7a devlikeapro/waha-plus “/usr/bin/tini – /e…” 4 hours ago Up 4 hours 0.0.0.0:3000->3000/tcp, [::]:3000->3000/tcp root-waha-1

7

If your container name is n8n-oq2u-n8n-1

Type docker logs n8n-oq2u-n8n-1

What does it show?

8

Hey @Nicolas_Zein,
Welcome to the community

Plz don’t copy the whole n8n “app” folder from npm into Docker.
In Docker you only migrate the data directory so try this:

  1. On your old npm server, copy ~/.n8n/ (this must include database.sqlite, the config file with your encryption key so credentials don’t break, and binaryData/ since you’re using filesystem binary mode).
  2. On Hostinger, place it somewhere like /opt/n8n/.n8n and mount it in docker-compose.yml as - /opt/n8n/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n.
  3. Fix permissions (common reason it won’t boot): run chown -R 1000:1000 /opt/n8n/.n8n. in terminal
  4. Restart clean and check logs: run “docker compose down && docker compose up -d” then “docker logs -f n8n-oq2u-n8n-1”

With a 5GB sqlite first start may take time so don’t keep restarting the container.
let me know if it helps

9

Thank you very much, will try that soon.

10

@Mayank1024 did you get my message?

12

I deleted it that vm i am starting over again, my apologies. I will tell you soon what it says.

13

Thank you so much buddy, will try this now.

14

@Vishishta_Dilsara @Mayank1024 You guys are INCREDIBLE!!! That worked amazingly well.