Comment 78 for bug 634487

Same experience here, please be aware that the zone naming is specific for an account and not globally. So if you see eu-west-1a that can for me be 1b or 1c. There is not consistency between accounts for that.

How I worked around this is that I've started 3 instances and found out that in only one of the 3 EU zones allowed me to install and run npm. In the one zone that I got a working installation I was able to start multiple t1.micro nodes and install and run node on it. And on the other 2 zones even new instances gave me the same, non-working result.

So I guess it has to do with something specific to the zone.