How To Troubleshoot Terraform Enterprise Flexible Deployment Options Startup Issues – HashiCorp Help Center

Expected Outcome

Debug Terraform Enterprise Flexible Deployment Options startup issues.

Prerequisites

Terraform Enterprise Flexible Deployment Options (Docker/Podman)

Use Case

The Terraform Enterprise application fails to start without sufficient details in the logs.

Procedure

Docker

Edit the docker-compose.yaml to add a custom entrypoint, e.g:

---
name: terraform-enterprise
services:
tfe:
image: images.releases.hashicorp.com/hashicorp/terraform-enterprise:<vYYYYMM-#>
## Adding Custom Entrypoint for Troubleshooting Startup Issues
entrypoint: "tail -f /dev/null"
environment:
TFE_LICENSE: "<Hashicorp license>"
... truncated

Optional - To gather logs for Support

# Modify the docker-compose.yaml
read_only: false
tmpfs:
  - /tmp:mode=01777
  - /run
    #- /var/log/terraform-enterprise

Deploy the container after saving the changes
```
docker compose up -d 
```

Launch the Terraform Enterprise Startup script

docker exec -it terraform-enterprise-tfe-1 /usr/local/bin/supervisord-run

Once the Startup script exits proceed to review the logs to identify the root cause(example output)

# From the Docker container
docker exec -it -w /var/log/terraform-enterprise terraform-enterprise-tfe-1 sh -c 'ls -l&&bash'

total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 terraform-enterprise root 1022 Jul 18 22:27 redis.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 terraform-enterprise root 1197 Jul 18 22:27 supervisord.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 terraform-enterprise root 9941 Jul 18 22:27 terraform-enterprise.log

# From the Linux host root access is required
cd $(docker inspect terraform-enterprise-tfe-1 --format '{{.GraphDriver.Data.MergedDir }}')/var/log/terraform-enterprise && ls -l

total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj root 1022 Jul 18 17:27 redis.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj root 1197 Jul 18 17:27 supervisord.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj root 9941 Jul 18 17:27 terraform-enterprise.log

Optional - Create a .tar.gz file with the Terraform Enterprise logs

# Sudo access is required
sudo tar cvzf /path/to/save/terraform-enterprise.logs.tar.gz $(docker inspect terraform-enterprise-tfe-1 --format '{{.GraphDriver.Data.MergedDir }}')/var/log/terraform-enterprise

Podman

Edit the <kube.yaml> to add a custom entrypoint, eg:

---
apiVersion: "v1"
kind: "Pod"
metadata:
labels:
app: "terraform-enterprise"
name: "terraform-enterprise"
spec:
restartPolicy: "Never"
containers:
- env:
- name: "TFE_OPERATIONAL_MODE"
... truncated
image: "images.releases.hashicorp.com/hashicorp/terraform-enterprise:<vYYYYMM-#>"
## Adding Custom Entrypoint for Troubleshooting Startup Issues
command: [ "/bin/bash", "-c", "--" ]
args: [ "while true; do sleep 3600; done;" ]
... truncated

Deploy the pod after saving the changes
```
podman play kube /path/to/<kube.yaml>
```