[URGENT] Failure to recover data after VPS crash (SQLite) – Issue loading administrator data

Questions
1

Hello n8n Team/Community,

I need help analyzing and recovering data after a serious server failure (VPS Mikrus) and the loss of current data. I’ve reached a stage where the n8n container is running, but it’s not loading the saved workflows.

:gear: Configuration Details

  • n8n Version: 1.113.3 (latest available at the time of the last run)

  • Hosting Method: Docker Compose

  • Database: SQLite (database.sqlite)

  • Server: Linux VPS (Mikrus)

:police_car_light: Situation Description and Steps Taken

  1. Failure: My VPS crashed. I lost the current data (from the last week), but I had two older backups.

  2. Restoration: I attempted to restore data from the oldest but only available file: n8n_backup_2025-10-05.tar.gz.

  3. File Verification: After unzipping, the database.sqlite file is present in the /root/n8n/data/ directory and has a size of ~536 KB. Permissions were fixed (chown 1000:1000).

:cross_mark: The Problem (Diagnosis)

Despite the correct upload of the database.sqlite file and the container starting successfully, n8n:

  1. Does not load administrator data: When I visit the URL, instead of the login screen, I see “Set up owner account”.

  2. No Workflows: After creating a new administrator account, the dashboard is completely empty (I see “everything new”). It appears n8n considers the database empty or incompatible.

:red_question_mark: Questions for the Community/Support

  1. Could the issue be due to corruption in the user/authentication tables within the database.sqlite file?

  2. Is there a tool to check the integrity of my database.sqlite file or to extract only the workflow data from it (without credentials) for manual import?

  3. Could the lack of a manually set N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY variable in the .env file be causing this issue (the database used a default/old key and is unreadable by the new installation)?

If possible, I would be willing to provide the database.sqlite file for analysis to verify its content.

Thank you for any help and guidance!