selfhostedops-stack/automation

Automation (episode 8)

Three workflows that wire the other services together. They are the reason n8n sits in this compose file, and they are all built from HTTP requests, so nothing here depends on a vendor connector that might change next quarter.

File	Trigger	What it does
a-deploy-notifier.json	Forgejo push webhook	Turns a push into one push notification: repo, branch, author, commit subject, link to the commit.
b-incident-responder.json	Uptime Kuma webhook notification	On DOWN: opens an incident document in the wiki and sends a high priority alert with a link to it. On UP: finds that document, appends the downtime, renames it to "Resolved", sends the all clear.
c-nightly-ops-digest.json	Schedule, 07:00 daily	Reads commits of the last 24 hours from Forgejo, availability from the Uptime Kuma status page, and the last restic snapshot from the episode 7 backup log. Writes one wiki document and sends a one line summary.

The point of this episode

Automation needs webhooks. Webhooks look like they need a public address. They do not, at least not for everything:

• Senders that live on the box (Forgejo, Uptime Kuma) call http://n8n:5678/webhook/... straight over the docker network. That traffic never touches the internet, needs no certificate and no port.
• Senders out on the internet need one public path, and exactly one. The Caddyfile publishes /webhook/*, /webhook-test/* and /webhook-waiting/* under n8n.<DOMAIN> and answers an empty 404 for everything else. The editor, the REST API and the login page are not reachable from outside at all.
• You reach the editor over the mesh from episode 5, on the container address, on plain HTTP inside the tunnel.

Two different 404s tell you which layer answered: an empty body is Caddy refusing the path, a JSON body is n8n saying the webhook is not registered.

Importing them

1. Create the three credentials in n8n first. Their names in these files are ntfy (n8n user), Outline API and Forgejo API; keep the names and n8n will attach them on import.
   • ntfy (n8n user): Basic Auth, an ntfy user with write access to the topics. docker compose exec -e NTFY_PASSWORD='...' ntfy ntfy user add --role=user n8n then ntfy access n8n alerts write-only and the same for deploys.
   • Outline API: Header Auth, name Authorization, value Bearer ol_api_... (Outline: Settings, API tokens).
   • Forgejo API: Header Auth, name Authorization, value token ... (a read-only token is enough: read:repository).
2. Import each JSON, then replace the placeholders:
   • REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_CREDENTIAL_ID is filled in when you pick the credential in the node.
   • REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_OUTLINE_COLLECTION_ID is the collection the incident and digest documents are written into. Create a collection, open it, the id is in collections.info or in the URL of the collection settings.
   • REPLACE_ON_IMPORT is the webhook id; n8n generates a fresh one.
   • ops.example.com appears in the two links that go into push messages.
3. Activate all three.

Wiring the senders

Forgejo, per repository: Settings, Webhooks, Forgejo, URL http://n8n:5678/webhook/forgejo-push, content type application/json, event Push.

Forgejo refuses to deliver to a private address unless you tell it not to. That is the FORGEJO__webhook__ALLOWED_HOST_LIST: "external,n8n" line in compose.yml. Without it the push is accepted, the workflow never runs, and the only trace is one line in the Forgejo log:

webhook can only call allowed HTTP servers (check your webhook.ALLOWED_HOST_LIST setting), deny 'n8n(172.18.0.3:5678)'

Uptime Kuma: Settings, Notifications, add a Webhook notification, URL http://n8n:5678/webhook/kuma-incident, content type application/json, then attach it to the monitors you want incident documents for. Kuma sends one POST per state change, with heartbeat.status 0 for down and 1 for up.

The one file that matters for backups

/home/node/.n8n/config holds encryptionKey. Every credential in the database is encrypted with it. The database alone is worth nothing:

Credentials could not be decrypted. The likely reason is that a different
"encryptionKey" was used to encrypt the data.

The workflows survive, the credentials do not, and n8n quietly writes a fresh key on first start when the file is missing, so nothing looks broken until a workflow runs. The episode 7 backup covers the whole n8n_data volume, so the key is in the snapshot. Verify it rather than assume it:

restic ls latest | grep n8n_data/_data/config

If you set N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY in the environment instead, that value wins and the file is never written; then the key belongs in your password manager, and it has to survive independently of the box.

Notes

• c-nightly-ops-digest.json reads /backup/backup.log, which compose.yml bind-mounts read-only from episode 7. Without that file the digest reports "no backup log found" and still writes the document.
• N8N_RESTRICT_FILE_ACCESS_TO: /backup is what allows that read. Without the variable, 2.x answers "Access to the file is not allowed." for every path. Do not widen it to /: a workflow could then read the encryption key.
• The digest matches commit responses to repositories by position. That holds because the HTTP node returns exactly one item per input item when the response format is text and errors continue.
• These workflows use plain HTTP Request nodes on purpose. A Forgejo node, an Outline node and an ntfy node either do not exist or would add a dependency for three URL calls.