hashicorp/terraform · error

error loading plugin path: %s

Error message

error loading plugin path: %s

What it means

Thrown by `terraform validate` when c.loadPluginPath() returns an error — identical mechanism to the state-show plugin-path error. loadPluginPath calls WorkingDir.ForcedPluginDirs(), which reads the forced plugin directories marker file; it errors if that file exists but cannot be read or fails to JSON-unmarshal. The %s is the underlying error.

Source

Thrown at internal/command/validate.go:79

	var varDiags tfdiags.Diagnostics
	c.VariableValues, varDiags = args.Vars.CollectValues(func(filename string, src []byte) {
		loader.Parser().ForceFileSource(filename, src)
	})
	if varDiags.HasErrors() {
		diags = diags.Append(varDiags)
		return view.Results(diags)
	}

	dir, err := filepath.Abs(args.Path)
	if err != nil {
		diags = diags.Append(fmt.Errorf("unable to locate module: %s", err))
		return view.Results(diags)
	}

	// Check for user-supplied plugin path
	if c.pluginPath, err = c.loadPluginPath(); err != nil {
		diags = diags.Append(fmt.Errorf("error loading plugin path: %s", err))
		return view.Results(diags)
	}

	validateDiags := c.validate(dir)
	diags = diags.Append(validateDiags)

	// Validating with dev overrides in effect means that the result might
	// not be valid for a stable release, so we'll warn about that in case
	// the user is trying to use "terraform validate" as a sort of pre-flight
	// check before submitting a change.
	diags = diags.Append(c.providerDevOverrideRuntimeWarnings())

	return view.Results(diags)
}

func (c *ValidateCommand) validate(dir string) tfdiags.Diagnostics {
	var diags tfdiags.Diagnostics
	var cfg *configs.Config

View on GitHub (pinned to c9def3e214)

Solutions

1. Validate the forced plugin path file is a JSON array of strings, or delete it.
2. Re-run `terraform init` (without -plugin-dir if you want defaults) to regenerate the marker.
3. Fix .terraform permissions so the current user can read it, then re-run validate.

Example fix

# before
terraform validate
# error loading plugin path: invalid character 'x'...

# after
rm .terraform/.terraformrc_plugin_path
terraform init
terraform validate

// validate the forced plugin path marker before validate runs
func validateForcedPluginDirs(path string) error {
    raw, err := os.ReadFile(path)
    if os.IsNotExist(err) { return nil }
    if err != nil { return err }
    var dirs []string
    return json.Unmarshal(raw, &dirs)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running `terraform validate` when the forced-plugin-dirs file (.terraform marker written by `terraform init -plugin-dir`) exists but is unreadable or contains malformed JSON.

Common situations: Corrupt plugin-path file from an interrupted init; permission change on .terraform/; file synced/truncated by cloud storage; Terraform version mismatch writing an incompatible format.

Related errors

• error loading plugin path: %s
• Failed to load state: %s
• unable to locate module: %s
• invalid syntax: %w
• error deleting workspace %s: %w

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/terraform@c9def3e214 (2026-08-07). Data as JSON: /api/errors/75a0c4a091be675b. Report an issue: GitHub.