Error installing community nodes on n8n

[girish]

@benborges how does this work from a deployment perspective. Let's say you deploy 5 custom node modules. What happens after an update? How is the installation of these modules tracked ?

I checked their SaaS offering and they don't allow installing community modules.

Any suggestions welcome.

[nebulon]

I just tried the upstream offering and found that n8n cloud does not support community modules, not even in the latest version. I am questioning now if it makes even sense for us to bend around making that possible, which will surely result in breakage if community modules are not updated and tested against new n8n versions. If upstream can't even support this, while they have per-customer instances (probably also some kind of containerization) I don't think we can support that.

[jdaviescoates]

@nebulon said in Error installing community nodes on n8n:

If upstream can't even support this, while they have per-customer instances (probably also some kind of containerization) I don't think we can support that.

I know next to nothing about this, but perhaps it's just like hosted WordPress.com (where basically no plugin are allowed, unless you upgrade and then a few become available), and self-hosting WordPress where you can install as many plugins you like.

[benborges]

@girish I'm not sure what to say, the community nodes UI is there, live on the cloudron package, but without being able to test an install and subsequent N8N upgrade I'm not sure how I can provide more information

[girish]

@benborges yeah, I was only checking if you know how this works deployment wise. Atleast, upstream I cannot find information about this.

[benborges]

@girish i will try to check with tom on the n8n forum, thanks for looking!

[dev-cb]

@UweG said in Error installing community nodes on n8n:

Is it generally not possible to install community nodes on Cloudron-n8n?

It is possible, I am using io.n8n.cloudronapp@2.14.0 (n8n v0.201.0):

1. open the app terminal
2. go to custom extensions folder cd /app/data/custom-extensions/
3. install your desired community packages, e.g. npm i n8n-nodes-directus
4. start editing the file /app/data/env with the File Manager and add these line:

export N8N_CUSTOM_EXTENSIONS=/app/data/custom-extensions/

5. Last but not least: restart the app and find the node in the Add Node panel

[benborges]

@dev-cb Ohhh this is exciting, wondering what happens if N8N gets an upgrade that breaks a community node..what would be the upgrade path? wait for community node upgrade, then upgrade existing installed custom packages and restart N8N ?

[girish]

OK, I found some interesting notes at https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/community-nodes/installation/ . Investigating if that works for us.

edit: https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/community-nodes/troubleshooting/ is a better link

[nebulon]

To update this, we managed to support community modules now. This will be possible with the next package release, we just wait on the ajv module thread to be resolved as well.

[benborges]

@nebulon Testing it!

This is really neat because the numbers of node/third-party connectors from the community are really interesting to use !

[kevin.k]

@benborges Can't restart N8N after doing this

[benborges]

@kevin-k Strange...can you try to revert back to a working backup, reinstall community modules again, reboot once again and go to that page see if everything stick ?

I had issues first time I installed, had to reinstall once, but then it went smooth...