[docker] Docker is installed but Docker Compose is not ? why?

I have installed docker on centos 7. by running following commands,

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh
systemctl enable docker && systemctl start docker
docker run hello-world

NOTE: helloworld runs correctly and no issues.

however when i trying to run docker-compose (docker-compose.yml exists and valid) it gives me the error on Centos only (Windows version works fine for the docker-compose file)

/usr/local/bin/docker-compose: line 1: {error:Not Found}: command not found

This question is related to docker docker-compose dockerfile

The answer is


On Linux, you can download the Docker Compose binary from the Compose repository release page on GitHub. Follow the instructions from the link, which involve running the curl command in your terminal to download the binaries. These step-by-step instructions are also included below.

1:Run this command to download the current stable release of Docker Compose:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.26.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

To install a different version of Compose, substitute 1.26.2 with the version of Compose you want to use.

2:Apply executable permissions to the binary:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Note: If the command docker-compose fails after installation, check your path. You can also create a symbolic link to /usr/bin or any other directory in your path.


I'm installing on a Raspberry Pi 3, on Raspbian OS. The curl method didn't resolve to a valid response. It also said {error: Not Found}, I took a look at the URL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.11.2/docker-compose-Linux-armv7l and it was not valid. I guess there was no build there.

This guide https://github.com/hypriot/arm-compose worked for me.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
echo "deb https://packagecloud.io/Hypriot/Schatzkiste/debian/ jessie main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hypriot.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 37BBEE3F7AD95B3F
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-compose

Refered to the answers given above (I do not have enough reputation to refer separately to individual solutions, hence I do this collectively in this place), I want to supplement them with some important suggestions:

  1. docker-compose you can install from the repository (if you have this package in the repository, if not you can adding to system a repository with this package) or download binary with use curl - totourial on the official website of the project - src: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install /

  2. docker-compose from the repository is in version 1.8.0 (at least at me). This docker-compose version does not support configuration files in version 3. It only has version = <2 support. Inthe official site of the project is a recommendation to use container configuration in version 3 - src: https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file / compose-versioning /. From my own experience with work in the docker I recommend using container configurations in version 3 - there are more configuration options to use than in versions <3. If you want to use the configurations configurations in version 3 you have to do update / install docker-compose to the version of at least 1.17 - preferably the latest stable. The official site of the project is toturial how to do this process - src: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

  3. when you try to manually remove the old docker-compose binaries, you can have information about the missing file in the default path /usr/local/bin/docker-compose. At my case, docker-compose was in the default path /usr/bin/docker-compose. In this case, I suggest you use the find tool in your system to find binary file docker-compose - example syntax: sudo find / -name 'docker-compose'. It helped me. Thanks to this, I removed the old docker-compose version and added the stable to the system - I use the curl tool to download binary file docker-compose, putting it in the right path and giving it the right permissions - all this process has been described in the posts above.

Regards, Adam


The above solutions didn't work for me. But I found this that worked:

sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip python3-dev
sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io
curl -fsSL get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh
sudo pip3 install docker-compose
#sudo docker-compose -f docker-compose-profess.yml pull ofw
sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER
sudo reboot

I suggest using the official pkg on Mac. I guess docker-compose is no longer included with docker by default: https://docs.docker.com/toolbox/toolbox_install_mac/


docker-compose is currently a tool that utilizes docker(-engine) but is not included in the distribution of docker.

Here is the link to the installation manual: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

TL;DR:

curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.8.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose

(1.8.0 will change in the future)


first of all please check if docker-compose is installed,

$ docker-compose -v

If it is not installed, please refer to the installation guide https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/ If installed give executable permission to the binary.

$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

check if this works.


just use brew:

brew install docker-compose

Installing docker doesn't mean that you've installed docker-compose. It has as prerequisitions that you've already installed the docker engine which you've already done. After that you're able to install docker-compose following this link for Centos 7.


If you installed docker by adding their official repository to your repository list, like:

$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

Just do:

$ sudo apt-get install docker-compose

In case on RHEL based distro / Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install docker-compose

I'm on debian, I found something quite natural to do :

apt-get install docker-compose

and it did the job (not tested on centos)


I'm installing on a Raspberry Pi 3, with Raspbian 8. The curl method failed for me (got a line 1: Not: command not found error upon asking for docker-compose --version) and the solution of @sunapi386 seemed a little out-dated, so I tried this which worked:

First clean things up from previous efforts:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo pip uninstall docker-compose

Then follow this guidance re docker-compose on Rpi:

sudo apt-get -y install python-pip
sudo pip install docker-compose

For me (on 1 Nov 2017) this results in the following response to docker-compose --version:

docker-compose version 1.16.1, build 6d1ac219

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