Use local directory instead of docker volume for n8n_data

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

I would like to use a local folder instead of a docker volume for the /home/node/.n8n folder, but when I do it gives an error.
This is the docker compose file:

services:
  n8n:
    container_name: n8n
    image: docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 5678:5678
    environment:
      - N8N_HOST=n8n.xx.xx
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=https
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://n8n.xx.xx/
      - GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Europe/Rome
    volumes:
      - ./n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n
      - ./local-files:/files

What is the error message (if any)?

n8n  | No encryption key found - Auto-generating and saving to: /home/node/.n8n/config
n8n  | Error: Command "start" not found

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version:
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker
  • Operating system: Ubuntu 24.04.2
2

The difference between the named volumes and bind mounts is as follows (I hope I understand this correctly based on what I read in the docs).

When you use named volume

- n8n_storage:/home/node/.n8n

Docker creates this volume automatically if it doesn’t exist, and (what is importnat) initializes it with the contents of the target directory in the image (i.e. the contents of /home/node/.n8n inside the container). This means that the the app files that n8n expects are preserved, nothing is overwritten [1].

On the other hand, with the bind mount

- ./n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n

Docker does not copy anything into this directory - it simply overrides the container’s /home/node/.n8n folder with whatever is in your local folder, which causes node_module and all the good stuff to be missing, including the start script in package.json, and I assume this is what happens in your case [2].

The easiest way to go about this is:

  1. use named volume
  2. if you need to access to files in the volume, this is what you can do:
  3. run docker inspect n8n_n8n_storage (where n8n_n8n_storage is the name of your named volume)
  4. find the MountPoint field, this is where you can access the volume on the host machine.
$ docker volume list | grep n8n_storage
    local     n8n_n8n_storage

$ docker inspect n8n_n8n_storage | grep Mount
    "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/n8n_n8n_storage/_data",

$ sudo ls /var/lib/docker/volumes/n8n_n8n_storage/_data
    binaryData  config  crash.journal  custom  git  nodes  ssh

Hope it helps.

3

Got it, would have preferred to keep everything in the same folder but the volume will have to do.
Thanks a lot! :slight_smile:

4

@jabbson answer helped me to solve the problem but I wanted to use local bind. So, I wrote this script to solve this issue.

This script initializes an n8n_data folder by copying default configs from a Docker volume and sets correct permissions.

#!/bin/bash

# Set paths - you need to change this as per your setup
DATA_DIR="${HOME_DIR}/n8n-automation/n8n_data"

VOLUME_NAME="temp_n8n"

# Step 1: Create and start a temporary container to populate named volume
docker run --rm \
  --name temp-n8n-init \
  -v ${VOLUME_NAME}:/from \
  docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n:1.103.1 true

# Step 2: Copy from named volume to bind mount
docker run --rm \
  -v ${VOLUME_NAME}:/from \
  -v ${DATA_DIR}:/to \
  alpine sh -c "cp -r /from/. /to/"

# Step 3: Fix ownership and permissions
sudo chown -R 1000:1000 "${DATA_DIR}"
sudo chmod 600 "${DATA_DIR}/config"

# Step 4: Show success
echo "n8n_data folder is ready with correct contents and permissions."
5

Since I had already started the container with the volume (and started using n8n), I just stopped it, did a docker inspect to find the mountpoint and cp -ar everything to my directory. For now it looks like it is working.

knocks@basilisk /o/d/n8n> docker volume inspect n8n_n8n_data
[
    {
        "CreatedAt": "2025-07-18T19:36:57+02:00",
        "Driver": "local",
        "Labels": {
            "com.docker.compose.config-hash": "38d498770863d6bc2243973ba19c368c74a2195c888479e037b71146d586c1bb",
            "com.docker.compose.project": "n8n",
            "com.docker.compose.version": "2.38.2",
            "com.docker.compose.volume": "n8n_data"
        },
        "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/n8n_n8n_data/_data",
        "Name": "n8n_n8n_data",
        "Options": null,
        "Scope": "local"
    }
]

root@basilisk:/opt/docker/n8n# cp -ar /var/lib/docker/volumes/n8n_n8n_data/_data n8n_data

then I changed the volumes section in the docker compose file from:

volumes:
   - n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n
   - ./local-files:/files

to:

volumes:
    - ./n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n
    - ./local-files:/files

Of course this preserved everything I did on n8n, and I didn’t need a “support” container to copy the data.