Tag: no valid credential sources for S3 Backend found

Terraform backend configuration for remote storage may be quite challenging if the correct parameters are not passed.

We can get multiple errors while executing the terraform init command, depending upon the configuration arguments we miss or based upon the permissions defined for our AWS profile or AWS User/Role.

Terraform Backend State Configuration

Terraform Backend Configuration Document

Here, we will focus on valid credential errors.

Error: Error configuring S3 Backend: no valid credential sources for S3 Backend found.

Terraform backend configuration code: The backend was defined as below, we specified the bucket, key, and region.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
        source = "hashicorp/aws"
    }
  }
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "terraform-backend"
    key = "misc-infra-terraform-state"
    region = "us-east-1"
  }
}

When we ran the terraform init command for the above configuration and got the below error,

E:\terraform>terraform init

Initializing the backend...
╷
│ Error: error configuring S3 Backend: no valid credential sources for S3 Backend found.
│
│ Please see https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/settings/backends/s3.html
│ for more information about providing credentials.
│
│ Error: NoCredentialProviders: no valid providers in chain. Deprecated.
│       For verbose messaging see aws.Config.CredentialsChainVerboseErrors

In our case, the fix was pretty easy, the above terraform backend block had missing AWS credentials, we just passed the credential details, and it worked like charm!

Updated S3 Backend configuration

terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
        source = "hashicorp/aws"
    }
  }
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "terraform-backend"
    key = "misc-infra-terraform-state"
    region = "us-east-1"
    profile = "myaws_profile"
  }
}