How to fix timeout while waiting for state to become ready in Terraform

Add or modify the timeouts block on the resource to allow more time for provisioning:

resource "aws_route" "example" {
  route_table_id            = aws_route_table.example.id
  destination_cidr_block    = "0.0.0.0/0"
  gateway_id                = aws_internet_gateway.example.id

  timeouts {
    create = "5m"
    update = "5m"
    delete = "5m"
  }
}

For other AWS resources, adjust the timeouts block accordingly. Some resources support different timeout operations (create, update, delete).

Log into your AWS Management Console (or applicable cloud provider) and verify the resource is actually being created despite the timeout:

1. Navigate to the relevant service (EC2, Route Tables, RDS, etc.)
2. Search for the resource by name or ID
3. Check the resource state (running, available, pending, etc.)
4. If the resource exists and is in the desired state, the issue is just a timeout waiting, not a failed creation
5. If the resource is stuck in a "pending" or intermediate state, investigate cloud provider logs

If the resource exists, you can import it into your Terraform state to continue: terraform import <resource-type>.<name> <resource-id>

Ensure Terraform can reach the cloud provider API:

1. Check if your internet connection is stable
2. Verify firewall and security group rules allow outbound HTTPS (port 443) access
3. Check if the cloud provider is experiencing an outage (check their status page)
4. If using a proxy, ensure it's properly configured in your Terraform environment
5. Run terraform plan to verify provider authentication is working correctly

Network latency can compound and cause operations to exceed timeout limits.

For AWS, configure retry behavior at the provider level:

provider "aws" {
  region      = "us-east-1"
  retry_mode  = "standard"
  max_retries = 25
}

The standard retry mode uses exponential backoff for transient errors. The max_retries setting controls how many times failed API calls are retried before giving up.

Simplify your infrastructure design to reduce provisioning time:

1. Break large deployments into smaller modules
2. Remove unnecessary resource dependencies
3. Use parallel resource creation by removing depends_on relationships where possible
4. Create resources in stages rather than all at once
5. For large databases or instances, pre-allocate sufficient capacity

Large or complex deployments can take longer due to cascading operations. Running terraform apply -parallelism=5 can help multiple resources provision simultaneously.

This error was a known bug in older AWS provider versions. Update to the latest version:

required_providers {
  aws = {
    source  = "hashicorp/aws"
    version = "~> 5.0"  # Use latest stable version
  }
}

Then run:

terraform init -upgrade
terraform apply

Higher provider versions include fixes for timeout handling and better state polling logic.