unknown shorthand flag: 'd' in -d docker compose

Question

I am working with a docker compose. when a trying to run docker compose in background, but it shows error unknown shorthand flag: 'd' in -d

I am tried in this way

docker compose -d up

docker-compose.yml

version: '3'

networks:
  loki:

services:
  loki:
    image: grafana/loki:2.5.0
    # volumes:
    #   - ./loki:/loki
    ports:
      - 3100:3100
    networks:
      - loki
  
  promtail:
    image: grafana/promtail
    volumes:
      - ./promtail:/etc/promtail
      - /var/log/nginx/:/var/log/nginx/
    command: -config.file=/etc/promtail/promtail-config.yml
    ports:
      - 9080:9080
    networks:
      - loki
  
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    networks:
      - loki

Does this answer your question? [docker-compose for Detached mode](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38086453/docker-compose-for-detached-mode) — decorator-factory, May 31 '22 at 11:29

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '22 at 11:33

12

-d is an option of subcommand up. if you run docker compose up --help you will have more information.

To solve the problem run docker compose up -d

answered May 31 '22 at 11:33

Lucien Makutano

171
1
7

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 02 '23 at 05:39

The accepted answer is the right answer for the question asker, and anyone else putting the -d in the wrong place. But this is the top hit for the error message, and I'm sure I'm not the only one getting this error after running:

docker-compose up -d

The accepted answer telling me to run exactly what I ran was pretty confusing. I finally worked out that:

docker-compose is a separate package from docker, at least on Arch Linux, and likely elsewhere, and
If docker-compose isn't installed, Docker thinks this makes sense:
```
$ docker compose up -d
unknown shorthand flag: 'd' in -d
```

I think it wold be infinitely more sensible to respond with:

docker: 'compose' is not a docker command.

Which is what it says if you don't use -d while not having docker-compose installed. I've now installed docker-compose and things are working, but I thought it was worth the time to hopefully save someone else some trouble if they end up here because they have docker but not docker-compose.

Thank you, this worked for me, if you are on Arch a simple `sudo pacman -S docker-compose` fixes the issue — Netsu, Apr 05 '23 at 15:44

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 08 '22 at 20:52

6

We were using a legacy version of Docker for compatibility purposes; in the older versions it's docker-compose not docker compose. Changing it to be hyphenated resolved this error.

answered Aug 08 '22 at 20:52

Albert Renshaw

17,282
18
107
195

unknown shorthand flag: 'd' in -d docker compose

3 Answers3