n8n crash after installing n8n-nodes-tesseractjs

[paboman]

n8n self hosted on docker (synology)

Kernel 3.10.108
Docker Engine 20.10.3 (API: 1.41)
n8n 1.116.2
n8n-nodes-tesseractjs 1.5.0

as soon as I hit install the n8n crashes and is unable to start again, I get this in the log:

Last session crashed
Initializing n8n process
Last session crashed
Initializing n8n process

To strat n8n again I need to delete n8n-nodes-tesseractjs folder in docker/n8n/data/nodes

other custom nodes works

[jreyesr]

Hello, and thanks for the report! I honestly don't know what could cause this, with the host platform being a NAS it could be anything. Plus the Tesseract library is cross-compiled as WebAssembly so this node isn't just a JS library, and that kernel version (theoretically) reached end-of-life in 2017 (but Synology may have kept making changes to it), and possibly many other things.

Could you please set the N8N_LOG_LEVEL variable to debug and see if you get any additional logs? There may be something there.

Also, if perhaps you have access to another Docker environment (ideally not a NAS, but a normal PC or server), could you try to run N8N there and install the node? I myself have the node v1.5.0 installed on multiple N8N instances, so it shouldn't be a problem with the node itself, but rather an interaction with its environment, but if you can also run the node successfully in a normal PC that would back that idea

[rooks88]

Hi everyone,

I have got the same issues on my Synology.
Therefore I tried to install the package on another n8n installation which is installed via portainer on a usual Docker system, running on an SLES15 Linux machine. I got the same problem in this environment, which leads me to the assumption that there is an issue with the n8n Version 1.116.2, which is installed on both systems.
On the Synology instance I got this problem on multiple packages. In one package on npmjs I found a note stating:
_Docker container crashes after installation

__ Cause: User permission issues
__ Solution: Ensure you switch back to USER node after installing system packages_

Perhaps this informations helps.

EDIT 1: Using npm in command line did solve the problem on the SLES-Docker-environment. I will try it on the Synology-environment, too

EDIT2: I successfully installed the package via npm on the Synology Docker environment. It even worked using the console function in portainer.

EDIT3: Ok after what looked like a successful npm install, the result is the same: crashin n8n docker container.
Looks like it has something to do with the Synology hardware.

Best Regards

[jreyesr]

Oh, interesting, thanks for all that extra info @rooks88! Could you perhaps share the package in which you found that note, the one that also fails on Synology? And after that, @paboman could you try to install that same package on your NAS, see if it fails too? I can try to install it on a normal PC and see what happens.

[rooks88]

Hi,
I’m currently not in the office but if I remember correctly the package was pdf2imageor something like that. I will look it up later and edit my post. Perhaps it’s a dependency both projects have in common.

Edit: I just remembered that I did not install the package where I found the info about crashing docker. I just found the info on npmjs. Still searching for the package. I keep you updated

Edit2:

I have thought about it intensely once more and remembered that initially, I had this problem with almost every package, which was caused by my n8n installation. After I did the installation using Portainer, I was able to install packages until I tried tesseract. During my search for a solution, I found the above-mentioned information in another package on npmjs, but it might not even have been an n8n package. As soon as I'm at my computer, I'll look for that package again

Edit3: Got it, it was a n8n package. But I could not install it because I get an error during installation, so I can not check wether it would crash docker or not
https://www.npmjs.com/package/n8n-nodes-pdf2image
Error during npm install:
npm error code EJSONPARSE
npm error path /root/.n8n/nodes/package.json
npm error JSON.parse Expected double-quoted property name in JSON at position 190 (line 8 column 3) while parsing near "...st-api": "0.8.0",\n }\n}\n"
npm error JSON.parse Failed to parse JSON data.
npm error JSON.parse Note: package.json must be actual JSON, not just JavaScript.
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2025-10-24T17_36_03_314Z-debug-0.log

0 verbose cli /usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/bin/npm
1 info using npm@10.9.3
2 info using node@v22.18.0
3 silly config load:file:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/npmrc
4 silly config load:file:/root/.n8n/nodes/.npmrc
5 silly config load:file:/root/.npmrc
6 silly config load:file:/usr/local/etc/npmrc
7 verbose title npm i n8n-nodes-pdf2image
8 verbose argv "i" "n8n-nodes-pdf2image"
9 verbose logfile logs-max:10 dir:/root/.npm/_logs/2025-10-24T17_36_03_314Z-
10 verbose logfile /root/.npm/_logs/2025-10-24T17_36_03_314Z-debug-0.log
11 silly logfile start cleaning logs, removing 1 files
12 silly packumentCache heap:944504832 maxSize:236126208 maxEntrySize:118063104
13 silly logfile done cleaning log files
14 verbose stack JSONParseError: Expected double-quoted property name in JSON at position 190 (line 8 column 3) while parsing near "...st-api": "0.8.0",\n }\n}\n"
14 verbose stack at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json-fast/lib/index.js:7:61
14 verbose stack at async #initTree (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/build-ideal-tree.js:268:21)
14 verbose stack at async Arborist.buildIdealTree (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/build-ideal-tree.js:178:7)
14 verbose stack at async Promise.all (index 1)
14 verbose stack at async Arborist.reify (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/reify.js:131:5)
14 verbose stack at async Install.exec (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/commands/install.js:150:5)
14 verbose stack at async Npm.exec (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/npm.js:207:9)
14 verbose stack at async module.exports (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/cli/entry.js:74:5)
15 error code EJSONPARSE
16 error path /root/.n8n/nodes/package.json
17 error JSON.parse Expected double-quoted property name in JSON at position 190 (line 8 column 3) while parsing near "...st-api": "0.8.0",\n }\n}\n"
18 error JSON.parse Failed to parse JSON data.
18 error JSON.parse Note: package.json must be actual JSON, not just JavaScript.
19 silly unfinished npm timer reify 1761327367022
20 silly unfinished npm timer reify:loadTrees 1761327367092
21 silly unfinished npm timer idealTree:init 1761327367093
22 verbose cwd /root/.n8n/nodes
23 verbose os Linux 4.4.302+
24 verbose node v22.18.0
25 verbose npm v10.9.3
26 verbose exit 1
27 verbose code 1
28 error A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2025-10-24T17_36_03_314Z-debug-0.log

Perhaps you can find anything familiar with your package. If I can be of any assistance let me know. I really like the idea of your package und would be delighted to use it soon :) Best Regards

Thanks for the help!

[jreyesr]

The thing that I see in common is that both nodes do things with PDFs. The Tesseract node doesn't technically need to handle PDFs since it actually processes images, but reading text stored in images inside PDFs is quite a common task, which N8N's Read from File node doesn't handle (it just reads the text in the PDF), so I added it here so you can directly pass it a PDF. And we've already had issues with the library that parses PDFs, see #5. I'm not certain that is the case, but it may be.

I'll keep trying to reproduce the issue, I'm thinking about trying to get a VM running with the Synology firmware (which is very much unsupported, I assume), and see if I can get a crash there, too.

I can't think of anything else to ask of you for now, except if you'd perhaps be willing to share the model of your NAS and the OS version that it's running, or however Synology calls the OS. Firmware, maybe? I think I've read "DSM v7" somewhere, so maybe it'd be the version of DSM? I'd try to install that same version on my VM if there's some sort of download page. As for the the NAS model says things about the processor that it's running, which may be important too (maybe it's an old exotic ARM processor, that may trigger all sorts of bugs in complex libraries such as the PDF parser or Tesseract)

[rooks88]

Hi, sorry for letting you wait.
I run everything on a Synology DS220+ with the OS Version "DSM 7.2.2.-72806".

I was thinking about finding a Docker Container which converts PDF to PNG using REST communication and then forward it to tesseract. Unfortunately this still requires the tesseract library to run, so I'm struggeling at the moment. I would prefer to use your tesseract n8n integration :)

If I can be of any assistance, please let me know!

Best Regards!

[jreyesr]

Hello! No worries, it's a weekend after all.
I think I can emulate that particular device model on Virtualbox, though I'm unsure it will fail. I've already set up a VM for another device model, because I didn't know which one you were using, and it worked fine. I'll try again with this one.

In the meantime, perhaps you could set up another N8N container, a completely fresh one, install just this node, and try to run a simple workflow? This would be to isolate the effects of any other previously installed packages, or something. When I set up N8N, I only remember doing this:

• Mount /home/node/.n8n to a folder in the docker/ directory, just as done here in the "n8n container configuration" section (use a new one if you are already using docker/n8n or something for your original N8N instance, so it doesn't share anything)
• I didn't add the WEBHOOK_URL envvar, because I don't need it
• I set the N8N_SECURE_COOKIE envvar to false
• I think I had the EACCES: permission denied error when first booting, which I fixed by enabling SSH on the NAS and then running chown 1000:1000 ..., I don't remember how the directory is called, but it'd be however the docker/n8n directory appears on SSH

If you can, try to run set up a fresh container as close as you can to that (I used N8N v1.116.2), install this node using N8N's web UI (don't run shell commands on the container shell) and try to recognize a PDF that has images.

[rooks88]

Before we check a lot of things I perhaps found something interesting...
I wanted to check on other aspects of the workflow I am designing right now so I inserted a "Extract from File" module and tested it with a pdf/a with embedded text. This standard n8n module caused my container to crash as well. Perhaps it has something to do with n8n in general or pdf format in combination with the Synology architecture?! Thats what I can imagine to be the underlying problem right now.

What do you think ?

[jreyesr]

Nooo, not Extract from File again :)

A few months ago there was #5, it was also a weird interaction between the Extract from File node and the Tesseract node. That's supposed to be fixed already, though, but yes, the Extract from File node (in PDF extraction mode) can also behave in weird ways.

Back then, the interaction was that if this node was run once, then the Extract node would always fail, and if the Extract node was run once, then this node would always fail. The failures kept happening until N8N was restarted, and after it rebooted you could run one node or the other again (which would of course then break the other node). Can you try the Extract node just after restarting the N8N container, ensuring that the Tesseract node doesn't run first? If the first node you run also fails, then it's not a repeat of that issue.

Also, if you could share the PDF (if it doesn't contain private information), that'd be nice so I can also try it on my (emulated) Synology. Alternatively, try to generate a blank PDF or one with a little text, and see if the failure happens on all PDFs, or only on PDF/A files, or only on that particular file. If it happens on all PDFs, then yes, that points to some incompatibility with Synology (they use Celeron processors and such, sometimes fairly old ones, and a heavily customized Linux kernel, so yeah), whereas if it's only on that file, it may be something with that particular file or with PDF/A (it shouldn't, both this node and Extract from File use Mozilla's pdf.js, which I understand is very actively maintained, I believe it powers Firefox's default PDF reader)

[rooks88]

Hi, sorry for letting you wait. It was a hell of a week...

The Extract node crashes the container everytime I tried to use it. As I wanted to check on the tesseract thing I launched a plain Debian container and used tesseract with python in it. It works like charm, BUT I had to check with png files.
So I assume the pdf lib might be the problem for the Synology processor... as long as I just keep moving it with n8n I got no problem. But I think opening the file may be the step during the whole process when the NAS decides to stop working.

The pdf I used is simple, so there is no problem in sharing it.

Perhaps this helps, but if I'm right regarding the PDFs, that's ok. I will try to use a different approach then.

Thanks for your patience and all your efforts!

testtesttest.pdf

[jreyesr]

Yeah, it seems to be something to do with Synology and the PDF reading library. There's https://community.n8n.io/t/self-host-disconnect-while-extract-file-pdf/189171, https://community.n8n.io/t/extract-from-file-pdf-connection-lost/ and n8n-io/n8n#19359, on all of those there are people with similar crashes when running N8N on NASes. There's a mention of it being an issue with Skia, which is a low-level graphical library that could conceivably have issues with specific processors, but I'm not sure. I've pinged the N8N people to see if something comes out of that, maybe they know of a way to get more information on crashes (because right now we see no interesting logs). I've commented on n8n-io/n8n#19359 (comment) if you'd like to follow that.

Also, I'll see if there's another way for the Tesseract node to pull images out of PDFs. I used pdfjs because it's solid and N8N uses it too, but this node doesn't need all of pdfjs, just enough to find where the images live and pull those blocks out of the filestream. Maybe there's a lighter library or something that doesn't exhibit the issue (though of course you'd still have it if you tried to extract text from the PDF, this node would just read text that was inside images inside the PDF)

If you can do it, I've seen some mentions that this issue started recently, maybe a month or two ago, so perhaps you could try running a container on version 1.106.whatever. I think there's an archive of older image versions so you should be able to pull it and run another container, and see if that one can read from a PDF.

In the meantime, thanks for all the help too! It's been invaluable, especially since I can't reproduce the error myself.

[rooks88]

That’s something I definitely can try next week. If it helps I can setup a raspberry pi with n8n newest version, too?!
The Pi won’t help as a productive alternative but it could provide some different chipset to find the difference that caused the problem on the synology. What do you think - would these informations be useful or are they redundant?

Best regards

[jreyesr]

@rooks88 Yes, if you have a Raspberry lying around to test this it would be useful, that's an entirely different CPU arch so maybe it triggers the bug too.

@DePunk-eth Hello! Sorry about the issue. Do you have it only on the Tesseract node or does it also crash if you try to read the same PDF on the Extract from File node?

[Xopher00]

Just sharing that I am having the exact same issue. N8N crashes immediately upon installing Tesseract, and remains stuck in a loop of booting and crashing with the error message

Last session crashed
Initializing n8n process
 Puppeteer node: Container detected via .dockerenv file 

Only way to fix was to force-stop the n8n container, mount the data volume to a new container, and manually remove the Tesseract node.

$ docker stop n8n 
$ docker run --rm -it -v n8n_data:/mnt/n8n_data  alpine sh 
/ # cd /mnt/n8n_data/
/mnt/n8n_data # rm -rf nodes/node_modules/n8n-nodes-tesseractjs
/mnt/n8n_data # exit
$ docker restart n8n