Running n8n community edition with Synology Container Manager

I have been toying around n8n for a couple of days and installing the community edition on my trusted Synology NAS seemed to be the best way to experiment it. However I realized there are a bunch of quirks to go through if I want it to run smoothly. Here is a quick guide on how I did it. Marius Hosting has an excellent guide using Portainer, but I wanted to use the native DSM Container Manager.

There might have some trial and errors, I had to duplicate my container several times to get it right.

DSM Container Manager setup

• If It's not installed yet, set up the package on your Synology NAS
• Go to image, look for n8n latest and download it
• Create a n8n folder in the /docker shared folder in DSM

n8n container configuration

This is where things get a bit complicated. You have to configure some settings correctly otherwise you won't be able to use incoming webhooks or you will lose configuration each time you upload/reboot the container.

• Volume: map /docker/n8n to /home/node/.n8n with read/write access

• add an environment variable WEBHOOK_URL and assign it to https://{yourddns domain}.synology.me:8443/
  • The port number is important if you want to use Telegram webhooks
• Start the container, and cross fingers. If you encounter permission issues such as EACCES: permission denied, open '/home/node/.n8n/config', you need to adjust your shared folder permissions to ensure the container user (for me it was user 1000) can read/write this folder

Web Station Configuration

• I use port-based because it's simpler
• Go to Web Portal -> Create -> Pick your n8n container instance and select "Port-based", check HTTPS and use port 8443 (should be the same as configured in WEBHOOK_URL
• You might also want to set up port forwarding on your router. For this it depends on the brand, just make sure to forward both UDP/TCP port 8443 to your Synology local IP