The file "/files/{{$now.toMillis()}}.mp4" is not writable

[zhoxv]

Hi guys , can any one help me?

[Anshul_Namdev]

Hi @zhoxv welcome!
For file operations you need to explicitly mention those paths/folders into this N8N_RESTRICT_FILE_ACCESS_TO=/files and that /files should be an DIR, and once that is done you need to run this:
chown -R 1000:1000 ./local-files

So now your path should be writable.

[Benjamin_Behrens]

hey @zhoxv — looks like the path field might not be in Expression mode. to evaluate $now.toMillis(), the field needs to start with =, so it would be ={{ '/files/' + $now.toMillis() + '.mp4' }}. without the = prefix, n8n treats the whole thing as a literal string including the curly braces, which is probably why it’s failing on the filename.

[JohnHalex]

@zhoxv You should specify which directories n8n can access by setting the environment variable N8N_RESTRICT_FILE_ACCESS_TO=/files. This ensures n8n is restricted to only read from/write to the /files directory, then verify that the /files directory exists. It must be a valid directory path that n8n can access.

Run the following command to set the correct ownership for the directory so that it is writable by n8n:

chown -R 1000:1000 ./local-files

This command changes the ownership of /files to user ID 1000 and group ID 1000, which is typically the user n8n runs as in a Docker container.

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