Docker compose command is failing with conflict

Question

I am bringing up my project dependencies using docker-compose. So far this used to work

docker-compose up -d --no-recreate;

However today I tried running the project again after couple of weeks and I was greeted with error message

Creating my-postgres ... error

ERROR: for my-postgres  Cannot create container for service postgres: b'Conflict. The container name "/my-postgres" is already in use by container "dbd06bb1d99eda6f075ea688df16e8b355e559e1759f084dee8f3cddfc535b0b". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.'

ERROR: for postgres  Cannot create container for service postgres: b'Conflict. The container name "/my-postgres" is already in use by container "dbd06bb1d99eda6f075ea688df16e8b355e559e1759f084dee8f3cddfc535b0b". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.'
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.

My docker-compose.yml file is

postgres:
    container_name: my-postgres
    image: postgres:latest
    ports:
      - "15432:5432"

Docker version is

Docker version 19.03.1, build 74b1e89

Docker compose version is

docker-compose version 1.24.1, build 4667896b

Intended behavior of this call is to:

• make the container if it does not exist
• start the container if it exists
• just chill and do nothing if the container is already started

Answer 1

In my case I moved the project in an other directory. When I tryed to run docker-compose up it failed because of some conflicts.

With command docker system prune I resolved them.

Answer 2

Docker Compose normally assigns a container name based on its current project name and the name of the services: block. Specifying container_name: explicitly overrides this; but, it means you can’t launch multiple copies of the same Compose file with different project names (from different directories) because the container name you’ve explicitly chosen won’t be used.

You almost never care what the container name is explicitly. It only really matters if you’re trying to use plain docker commands to manipulate Compose-managed containers; it has no impact on inter-service communication. Just delete the container_name: line.

(For similar reasons you can almost always delete hostname: and links: sections if you have them with no practical impact on your overall system.)

Answer 3

It's caused by being in a different directory than when you last ran docker-compose up. One option is to change back to the original directory. Or if you've configured it as a systemd service you can use systemctl.