| --- |
| page_title: Recovering from State Disasters - Terraform CLI |
| descriptin: >- |
| Commands that allow you to restore state backups and override Terraform state |
| protections. |
| --- |
| |
| # Recovering from State Disasters |
| |
| If something has gone horribly wrong (possibly due to accidents when performing |
| other state manipulation actions), you might need to take drastic actions with |
| your state data. |
| |
| - [The `terraform force-unlock` command](/cli/commands/force-unlock) can |
| override the protections Terraform uses to prevent two processes from |
| modifying state at the same time. You might need this if a Terraform process |
| (like a normal apply) is unexpectedly terminated (like by the complete |
| destruction of the VM it's running in) before it can release its lock on the |
| state backend. Do not run this until you are completely certain what happened |
| to the process that caused the lock to get stuck. |
| |
| - [The `terraform state pull` command](/cli/commands/state/pull) and |
| [the `terraform state push` command](/cli/commands/state/push) can |
| directly read and write entire state files from and to the configured backend. |
| You might need this for obtaining or restoring a state backup. |