Describe the problem/error/question I used to run n8n locally on linux through the node.js and npm method. This deployment broke a few weeks ago. As I understood, that deploy is getting phased out in favor of the docker way. So, I switched to docker, pointed the /home/node/.n8n folder inside the co…

I did follow that thread in the past. All commands followed as proposed, still. although the container is actually able to see the right mounted files, they are untouched for over 10 days (since I actually changed from npm to docker). All log files are untouched and database seems untouched as well…

welcome to our community @damsdri I’d check the container logs/startup env for N8N_USER_FOLDER, then exec into the container and confirm where n8n is writing its current database.sqlite; it may be starting with another internal path or a named Docker volume, which would explain why the UI is clean …

Thanks @tamy.santos Looking into that ENV variable, I noticed it doesn’t exist, also running docker exec n8n echo $N8N_USER_FOLDER shows an empty/non existent variable. How would I check the database being written to by the n8n process within the container?

[image] damsdri: How would I check the database being written to by the n8n process within the container? This docker inspect <container name> --format '{{json .Mounts}}' | python3 -m json.tool in this case, you can see which directory is being used [image] [image]

@damsdri I initially thought you had customized the data folder, but if not, that’s fine.

Migrating from node.js to docker install, recovering data

Questions

kjooleng April 29, 2026, 3:43pm 3

This thread should help

http://community.n8n.io/t/migrate-sqlite-db-from-n8n-selft-hosted-npm-version-to-cloud-server-using-docker/

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Migrating from node.js to docker install, recovering data

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