Terraform is a popular Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool from HashiCorp that lets you provision and manage cloud resources using a declarative configuration language (HCL). This guide installs Terraform on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Tested and valid on:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS server
  • A user with sudo privileges
  • A cloud provider account (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.)

Step 1 – Add the HashiCorp Repository

Add the HashiCorp GPG key and apt repository:

wget -O - https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list

Step 2 – Install Terraform

Install:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install terraform -y

Step 3 – Verify the Installation

Check the version:

terraform --version

Step 4 – Create a Terraform Project

Create a project directory and configuration file:

mkdir ~/terraform-project && cd ~/terraform-project
nano main.tf

Add a simple local file resource:

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.0"
}

resource "local_file" "hello" {
  content  = "Hello from Terraform on Ubuntu 24.04!"
  filename = "/tmp/terraform-hello.txt"
}

Step 5 – Initialise, Plan, and Apply

Run the Terraform workflow:

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

Step 6 – Inspect and Destroy

View the state and destroy resources:

terraform show
terraform state list
terraform destroy

Step 7 – Enable Tab Completion

Add autocomplete to your shell:

terraform -install-autocomplete
source ~/.bashrc

Conclusion

Terraform is installed on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Use providers for AWS, Azure, GCP, or Kubernetes to provision real cloud infrastructure. Store state files in S3 or Terraform Cloud for team use.