Installing Node.js

The first thing we need to do is install Node.js. Amazon Linux is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and uses the yum utility to manage and install packages. The OS comes with Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) preconfigured in it. As we would expect, Node.js is present in EPEL:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-22-52 ~]$ sudo yum install --enablerepo=epel -y nodejs 
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-22-52 ~]$ node -v
v0.10.48

This is definitely an old version of the node but it's going to be good enough for what we need.