Terraform: can't authenticate to aws provider using shared config file or static variables

Question

I'm trying to use terraform to manage AWS resources and trying to set up the credentials configuration. I'm following the official documentation: https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/index.html

My first idea was set a shared credentials file so I configure it:

~.aws/credentials

[default]
aws_access_key_id=****
aws_secret_access_key=****

~.aws/config
```
[default]
region=us-east-1
output=json
```

app/main.tf

provider "aws" {
    region = "us-east-1"
    version = "~> 2.0"
    profile = "default"
}

terraform {
    backend "s3" {
        bucket = "example-bucket"
        key    = "terraform-test.tfstate"
        region = "us-east-1"
  }
}

When I run terraform init I receive the following message:

Error: No valid credential sources found for AWS Provider.
        Please see https://terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/index.html for more information on
        providing credentials for the AWS Provider

I have already tested the credentials using aws cli and it's working perfectly.

After that, I tried to configure static credentials in main.tf like this:

provider "aws" {
    region = "us-east-1"
    version = "~> 2.0"
    access_key = "****"
    secret_key = "****"
}

Same error...

I decided to test with environment variables and then it worked. But now I want to know why I could not configure with static variables or shared config file. All this cases was described in the official docs, what am I doing wrong?

Gilad Neiger Gilad Neiger · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-02T09:25:21

By terraform documentation, you can specifiy the credentials file by code. example:

provider "aws" {
  region                  = "us-west-2"
  shared_credentials_file = "/Users/tf_user/.aws/creds"
  profile                 = "customprofile"
}

*I'd also make sure that the env variables aren't set (just to ensure that terraform surely looks for the credentials file), as the priority of the credentials that terraform will look for are:

a. Inline acces key and secret key.

b. Environemnt variables

c. Credentials file

Terraform: can't authenticate to aws provider using shared config file or static variables

3 Answers