I noticed when you run docker-compose up with --no-build flag compose is looking for folders referenced in build section of compose file and errors out when running. I was able to run it after creating the folders referenced in build on the remote server. My scenario was I had moved the container images by scp’ng the tar file on to the remote host and and doing a docker load on the remote server which loads all the images referenced in compose file, I just needed to run docker-compose up with no-build option to start the containers because compose was looking for the folders had to manually create them so I could run it. No biggie just annoying behavior.