Terraform initialization failure

Playbook ID: terraform-init Category: deploy Severity: high Tags: terraform, iac, init, provider, backend

What this failure means

terraform init failed before any plan or apply could begin. Initialization downloads providers and configures the backend, so errors here block every later Terraform step.

Common log signals

Error: Failed to install provider
Error: Unsatisfied provider requirements
Error: Could not load plugin
Could not retrieve the list of available versions
Error: Backend configuration changed
Error: No configuration files
Failed to query available provider packages
Could not resolve provider

Diagnosis

terraform init failed before any plan or apply could begin. Initialization downloads providers and configures the backend, so errors here block every later Terraform step.

Fix steps

1. Check the provider version constraints in required_providers against what is available at registry.terraform.io.
2. For backend failures, verify that the state bucket or container exists and the CI service account has read and write permission on it.
3. Run terraform init -upgrade locally to refresh the provider lock file.
4. Check that the Terraform version in CI satisfies the required_version constraint in your Terraform configuration.

Validation

• terraform init completes successfully in the same workspace.
• terraform version matches the expected required_version contract.

Likely files to inspect

• *.tf
• .terraform.lock.hcl
• terraform/**

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain terraform-init
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

• Terraform initialization failure
• Deploy: terraform initialization failure
• Could not retrieve the list of available versions
• faultline explain terraform-init
• Terraform terraform initialization failure

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Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/deploy/terraform-init.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.