Using the "remote" backend leads to "could not find default credentials."

[jlcheng]

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Terraform Version

Terraform version: 0.12.9

Affected Resource(s)

• provider "google"

Terraform Configuration Files

Version that does not work

provider "google" {
  project = "jcheng-learn-gcp"
  region = "us-west2"
}

resource "google_compute_instance" "default" {
  name         = "test"
  machine_type = "f1-micro"
  zone         = "us-west2-a"

  tags = ["experiment", "transient"]

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-9"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"

    access_config {
      // Ephemeral IP
    }
  }

  allow_stopping_for_update = "true"
  
  service_account {
    scopes = ["userinfo-email", "compute-ro", "storage-ro", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-vision", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"]
  }  
}

terraform {
  backend "remote" {
    hostname = "app.terraform.io"
    organization = "XXXXXX"

    workspaces {
      name = "yyy_zzzzz"
    }
  }
}

Version that does work

provider "google" {
  project = "jcheng-learn-gcp"
  region = "us-west2"
}

resource "google_compute_instance" "default" {
  name         = "test"
  machine_type = "f1-micro"
  zone         = "us-west2-a"

  tags = ["experiment", "transient"]

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-9"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"

    access_config {
      // Ephemeral IP
    }
  }

  allow_stopping_for_update = "true"
  
  service_account {
    scopes = ["userinfo-email", "compute-ro", "storage-ro", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-vision", "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"]
  }  
}

Debug Output

https://gist.github.com/jlcheng/6e1023312ca321728d7cc8504a1d0c57

Panic Output

Expected Behavior

When the remote backend is enabled, I'd still expect the GCP provider to find the necessary credentials via the GOOGLE_CLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON environment variable.

Actual Behavior

When the remote backend is enabled, I can no longer specify the credential file using the three environment variables listed in the document: GOOGLE_CLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON, GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS, and GCLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON.

As a work around, I can store the contents of the credentials file in the Terraform.io backend and reference it as Terraform variable.

Steps to Reproduce

1. terraform plan

Important Factoids

None

References

None

[nat-henderson]

The issue here is that the remote backend does not have access to your local credentials.

Running plan in the remote backend. Output will stream here. Pressing Ctrl-C
will stop streaming the logs, but will not stop the plan running remotely.

Preparing the remote plan...

The error comes from your remote host. You'll need to set that environment variable on that host. This is a restriction of Terraform, not of our provider, unfortunately, so I'm going to go ahead and close this issue. Please comment again if you need any further help - and consider opening or voting on a similar issue in Terraform core if this is inconvenient for you.

[jlcheng]

Thanks for the clarification. I'll discuss in the core group instead.

[ghost]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you feel this issue should be reopened, we encourage creating a new issue linking back to this one for added context. If you feel I made an error 🤖 🙉 , please reach out to my human friends 👉 hashibot-feedback@hashicorp.com. Thanks!