Community Node Package Installation Fails on AWS EC2 Ubuntu Docker Setup for n8n

Based on the troubleshooting documentation, n8n installs community nodes directly onto disk and expects them to be present at startup. When running n8n via Docker, if you don't persist the ~/.n8n/nodes directory between container restarts (or container recreations such as those possibly happening on your AWS EC2 instance), the node packages might not be available at startup, resulting in errors like the one you’re seeing.

Here are two options to address this:

1. Persist the ~/.n8n/nodes Directory:
   Map the container’s ~/.n8n/nodes directory to a persistent location on your host. This way, even if the container is recreated, your installed community nodes remain available. The Docker installation guide recommends using a volume mount for this purpose.

2. Set the Environment Variable:
   Alternatively, you can set the environment variable N8N_REINSTALL_MISSING_PACKAGES to true. This forces n8n to reinstall missing community nodes at startup. Note, however, that this option may increase startup time and could potentially cause health check issues.

It appears that on your on-premises VM the node directory was already persisted or not subject to container recreation, whereas on your AWS EC2 instance the container storage might be more ephemeral. Adjusting your Docker configuration to persist the ~/.n8n/nodes directory should resolve the issue.