6 days ago
My n8n service stopped working after redeployment.
Image: n8nio/n8n:2.40.7
Database: PostgreSQL, still online.
Persistent volume mount: /home/node/.n8n
RAILWAY_RUN_UID=0
N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY was not explicitly configured.
Startup error:
Deployment key 'signing.hmac' cannot be read with this instance encryption key
A temporary read-only diagnostic command reports:
HOME_PATH /root
/home/node/.n8n/config: ENOENT
/root/.n8n/config: ENOENT
The service currently shows Active because the diagnostic process is running; n8n itself is not running. No volume backups are listed. I have exported the workflow JSON.
Can you help determine whether the original encryption key/config can be recovered from a previous deployment or any retained storage? The previous deployment filesystem has not been inspected.
Please prioritize preserving the existing database and volume. I do not want to reset encryption or delete data before recovery options are assessed.
1 Replies
6 days ago
We can't recover files from a previous deployment's container filesystem, and there's no way for us to hand back an earlier deployment's runtime files or image contents. Your earlier deployments of this service have already been removed, so there is no running container left to copy files from.
Your diagnostic shows the process home directory is /root, while your volume is mounted at /home/node/.n8n. n8n writes its generated key to the .n8n folder in the home directory, so a key written to /root/.n8n would not have been on the volume. Neither path has a config file now.
Your PostgreSQL database and the volume have not been changed by any of this. Nothing is reset or deleted unless you do it yourself.
Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • 6 days ago