The AI makes me run in circles

Hello community,
I’m pretty new working with n8n and I feel I have been to ambitious with my workflow project.
My biggest hurdle seems to be, that I want to pick up a jpeg-file from my NAS (in my local network) and process it over a couple of steps. AI told me to make use of a “Read JPEG File” node, which is grading the file as a binary data file and hand it over to the next node.
Unfortunately the does not work. I always get the same result saying: Access to the file is not allowed. Allowed paths: /Users/hj.gross/.n8n-files.
The AI seems to have no clue and I’ll loose my patients with it.
Can anybody help me out?
Thanks in advance. Hans-Jörg

Hi @HJ.Gross

This isn’t a workflow problem. It is n8n security blocking your file path.

n8n only allows files from this folder:/Users/hj.gross/.n8n-files

That’s why your NAS file is being rejected.

You can try to allow your NAS path export N8N_FILESYSTEM_ALLOWLIST=“/Users/hj.gross/.n8n-files,/Volumes/NAS/photos”

Then restart n8n

Or move the move the JPEG into the allowed folder:

/Users/hj.gross/.n8n-files

Hi Niffzy,
thanks for you quick reply. I’m wondering how much space I have on that n8n drive. Is there a maximum? And can I ftp file on that drive?
Thanks again.
Hans-Jörg

Hi @HJ.Gross

There’s no fixed limit from n8n, it just uses your local disk space, so the limit is whatever free space you have.

Yes, you can use FTP/SFTP, but only to upload files to your machine. Just make sure the files end up in:/Users/hj.gross/.n8n-files

Then n8n can access them