State Locking

To prevent concurrent modifications which could corrupt the state file, Terraform supports state locking, which can be implemented with various backends (e.g., Azure Blob Storage, Amazon DynamoDB, HashiCorp Consul).

State locking happens automatically on all operations that could write state. If state locking fails for any reason, Terraform will not continue. You can disable state locking for most commands with the -lock=false flag but it is not recommended without a good reason and further investigation of the problem (if any).

Not all backends support locking. Check the documentation for each backend (opens in a new tab)

Force Unlock

You can manually unlock the state if the unlocking failed. You'll need to capture the lock ID and run the force-unlock command:

terraform force-unlock -force LOCK_ID

For example:

terraform force-unlock -force 04a89d3f-be63-5024-b845-ee60fa9f8cae

⚠️ Warning: Be careful with forcing unlock the state file. If someone else is holding the lock it could cause multiple writes.