I Followed the n8n AWS Docs and It Broke at the First Command

Description and use

After installing the missing Docker Compose plugin, n8n runs on Amazon Linux 2023 with PostgreSQL.

Running docker compose up -d on Amazon Linux 2023 fails because Docker Compose is not installed by default.

After installing the missing Compose plugin, Docker Compose commands work and n8n runs on Postgres on an Amazon Linux 2023 EC2 instance.

SSH into a fresh EC2 instance
Install Docker engine with sudo dnf install -y docker
Create plugin directory sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins
Download Compose binary sudo curl -fsSL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.29.7/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
Make it executable sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
Enable and start Docker sudo systemctl enable --now docker
Verify Docker and Compose versions sudo docker --version and sudo docker compose version
Clone the repo with the compose file git clone https://github.com/simplynadaf/self-host-n8n-on-ec2.git
Edit passwords and encryption key in the compose file
Run sudo docker compose up -d
Check container status sudo docker compose ps
Verify n8n is reachable with curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'n8n -> HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://localhost:5678
Open the n8n UI in a browser and complete the first‑time setup

docker: 'compose' is not a docker command.

On Amazon Linux 2023: sudo dnf install -y docker installs the Docker engine. It does not install the Compose v2 plugin.

sudo docker compose version

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'n8n -> HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://localhost:5678