Help needed: S3 Backend credential error during Terraform initialization

Backend
1

I’m struggling with Terraform and AWS integration. When I run terraform init, I get this error:

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

I’m following a tutorial to set up CI/CD with GitHub and Terraform for an AWS EC2 instance. My terraform files look like this:

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "my-terraform-state-bucket"
    key    = "global/s3/terraform.tfstate"
    region = "us-west-2"
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

I’ve set up an S3 bucket with default encryption. Am I missing something in my configuration? How can I fix this credential issue? Any advice would be great!

2

hey there! have you tried setting up AWS CLI on your machine? it’s super helpful for managing credentials. also, double-check your AWS access key and secret key - sometimes those can be tricky. maybe try running ‘aws configure’ to make sure everything’s set up right? let me know if that helps!

3

yo, had similar issue. check ur environment variables - AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY. make sure they’re set correctly. Also, try runnin terraform with -var flags to pass creds directly. Sometimes that works when other methods fail. Good luck!

4

This error typically occurs when Terraform can’t find valid AWS credentials. A few suggestions to resolve this:

  1. Ensure your AWS credentials are properly configured in the ~/.aws/credentials file or as environment variables.

  2. If you’re using an IAM role, verify that it has the necessary permissions to access the S3 bucket.

  3. Consider explicitly specifying the profile in your backend configuration:

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket  = "my-terraform-state-bucket"
    key     = "global/s3/terraform.tfstate"
    region  = "us-west-2"
    profile = "your-aws-profile"
  }
}
  1. Check if your S3 bucket policy allows access from your current IP address or IAM user.

If none of these work, try running Terraform with debug logging enabled: TF_LOG=DEBUG terraform init. This should provide more detailed information about the credential discovery process.