N8N install on Proxmox VM with ngrok and trying to use telegram webhook

[hazzahex]

I’m pulling my hair out on this as I’ve been trying to set this up for a few days now and just simply had no luck.

Rough overview of my setup:

I have a VM on my self-hosted proxmox cluster.

Here is the content of a bunch of relevant files:

root@ubuntu:~/n8n# cat ~/.ngrok/ngrok.yml
version: "2"
authtoken: <MY_AUTH_TOKEN>
tunnels:
  n8n:
    proto: http
    addr: 5678

root@ubuntu:~/n8n# cat docker-compose.yml
version: "3.7"

services:
  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n:1.78.1
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"  # Container listens on port 5678
    environment:
      - N8N_HOST=${N8N_HOST}
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=http
      - N8N_WEBHOOK_URL=https://${N8N_HOST}
      - N8N_WEBHOOK_TEST_URL=https://${N8N_HOST}

      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE=true
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER=${N8N_USER}
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD=${N8N_PASS}

    volumes:
      - ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n
    restart: always

root@ubuntu:~/n8n# cat /etc/systemd/system/ngrok.service
[Unit]
Description=ngrok tunnel service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ngrok start --all --config <DIRECTORY>/.ngrok/ngrok.yml
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I can get it running, and I can access the N8N instance on my ngrok url, and I have used botfather to setup a telegram bot. I’ve taken the bottoken and run this command:

curl -F "url=https://<MY_NGROK_URL>/webhook-test/9922ea8a-e869-4226-885c-644ab10eece1/webhook" https://api.telegram.org/bot<MY_BOT_TOKEN>/setWebhook.

No matter what I do, I get an error on the telegram webhook as it either requires https, which shouldn’t be a problem, as the app is on https, or that the port is wrong.

I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version:: 1.78.1
• Database (default: SQLite): not configured yet
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): proxmox vm locally forwarded through ngrok
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):: running via docker
• Operating system:: ubuntu server

[Moaz_Muhammed]

I had the same exact problem, try Easypanel…

[Ruslan_Yanyshyn]

My setup is similar, but I use NPM instead of ngrok, and it works perfectly. It seems ngrok might be the issue.

[La_Bumba]

The same problem here under proxmox. If you use n8n cloud everything works.

[Diego_Vargas]

I had the same issue, see this helps:

1. Run ngrok on it’s own container

docker run -it -e NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=<your-token> ngrok/ngrok http http://<n8n-private-address>:5678 --url=<your-ngrok-domain>.free.app

2. Confirm you set the WEBHOOK_URL to your ngrok domain in your .env file or docker-compose.yml

 environment:
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://<your-ngrok-domain>.ngrok-free.app

3. If that fails then try N8N’s tunnel service, they offer a free service that can do the same as ngrok, though I was not able to get it to work.

docker run -it --rm \
 --name n8n \
 -p 5678:5678 \
 -v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n \
 docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n \
 start --tunnel

4. I also got it to work with Cloudflare Secure Tunnel, but that was a lot more work.

Good luck… Hope it helps!

[hazzahex]

After much messing around, I ended up opting for the recommendation of NPM. @Ruslan_Yanyshyn

Overview of the solution for anyone who stumbles on this forum post:

NPM - Nginx Proxy Manager

domain names: <my subdomain>
scheme: http
ip: local ip of n8n
port: 5678
websockets enabled: TRUE
force ssl: TRUE
http/2 support: TRUE

DNS for sub domain:

A record
n8n.XXXXX
destination: public IP of my router

docker-compose setup (.env file had user and password and for the host, just the raw domain without https etc. and no trailing slash):

version: "3.7"

services:
  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n:1.79.3
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"
    environment:
      - N8N_HOST=${N8N_HOST}
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=http
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://${N8N_HOST}
      - N8N_WEBHOOK_TEST_URL=https://${N8N_HOST}
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE=true
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER=${N8N_USER}
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD=${N8N_PASS}
    volumes:
      - ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n
    restart: always

I know there is a newer version of n8n, but I’m not ready to break things again just yet

telegram trigger:
used botfather, created a bot and then ran this command:

curl -F "url=COPY_PASTE_FROM_TELEGRAM_NODE_WEBHOOK" https://api.telegram.org/botMY_BOT_TOKEN/setWebhook

Think that’s pretty much it