How to get one drive working using n8n on Proxmox

3-minute read
n8n • Proxmox • OneDrive • OAuth2 • SSL

This is a guide on how to get one drive working using n8n on Proxmox. The reason why I’m sharing this is because I found it quite hard to find a guide on how to do this. There are many guides that show you how to do it when you run n8n on your local machine or on a cloud service like AWS, but not many that show you how to do it on Proxmox.

The problem that I was facing was that I could not get the OAuth2 authentication to work, because you need to have a redirect URI that is either accessible from the internet or you need to use a localhost redirect URI, but my n8n instance was running on Proxmox and was not accessible from the internet. So I needed to enter a redirect URI that was a local ip address, but that is not allowed by Microsoft. What is allowed is using a local ip adress if it has SSL enabled.

Step 1: Get n8n up and running on Proxmox Link to heading

Here you can find a script to get n8n up and running on Proxmox.

Step 2: Get SSL working on your n8n instance Link to heading

  • Login to your n8n shell through proxmox or ssh
  • Run the bash command below to generate a self signed certificate. You will be asked a few questions.
openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout n8n-key.pem -out n8n-cert.pem -days 365
  • Run whichever terminal editor you like to edit the n8n configuration file which is located at /opt/n8n.env if you used the script from step 1.
  • Add the following lines to the file:
N8N_SSL_KEY=/root/n8n-key.pem
N8N_SSL_CERT=/root/n8n-cert.pem
  • Update the N8N_PROTOCOL to https
  • Reboot the n8n instance
  • You should now be able to access n8n using https://your-ip-address:5678
  • You will get a warning in your browser because the certificate is self signed, but you can ignore that.

Step 3: Create an app in Azure portal Link to heading

  • Go to the Azure portal
  • Go to Azure Active Directory -> App registrations -> New registration
  • Enter a name for your app e.g. n8n
  • Select Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Microsoft Entra ID tenant - Multitenant) and personal Microsoft accounts (e.g. Skype, Xbox)
  • Under Redirect URI select Web and enter your n8n instance url e.g. https://your-ip-address:5678/rest/oauth2-credential/callback
  • Click Register
  • Go to Certificates & secrets -> New client secret
  • Enter a description e.g. n8n and select your desired expiry time
  • Click Add
  • Copy the value of the client secret, you will need it later
  • Go to API permissions -> Add a permission -> Microsoft Graph -> Application permissions
  • Search for Files.ReadWrite.All and select it
  • Click Add permissions
  • Click Grant admin consent for {your organization} and confirm

Step 4: Configure n8n OneDrive credentials Link to heading

  • Go to your n8n instance
  • Go to Credentials -> New Credential -> OneDrive OAuth2 API
  • Enter the following values:
    • Client ID: Application (client) ID from your app registration
    • Client Secret: The client secret value you copied earlier

You should now be able to authenticate and use OneDrive in n8n.

Don’t forget to regenerate a new certificate every year or before it expires and to generate a new client secret in Azure portal before it expires.