EC2 Userdata script : nvm cannot find .bashrc

Question

I have these four lines at the start of my ec2 user data script to install nvm and Node.js. This never seems to succeed.

touch ~/.bashrc
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc
nvm install 16

The nvm installer cannot find the .bashrc and conks out:

Cloud-init v. 22.2.2 running 'modules:final' at 2025年1月24日 07:28:19 +0000. Up 14.32 seconds.
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 16555 100 16555 0 0 54955 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 55000
=> Downloading nvm as script to '/.nvm'
=> Profile not found. Tried ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.zprofile, ~/.zshrc, and ~/.profile.
=> Create one of them and run this script again
 OR
=> Append the following lines to the correct file yourself:
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
=> Close and reopen your terminal to start using nvm or run the following to use it now:
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
/var/lib/cloud/instance/scripts/part-001: line 6: nvm: command not found

Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?

• Mureinik: What shell does it use? You can find this out by running echo $SHELL.

Answer 1

This seems like a bug in nvm. I was able to reproduce the error on a local Ubuntu container, and then I spun up a new container, replaced nvm 0.39.7 with the latest 0.40.1, and it worked just fine:

touch ~/.bashrc
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc
nvm install 16