I'm also get this error when i try to run the docker-compose and docker desktop is turn off, i think that is bug in docker-compose that not notify the user it that the problem is becuse the docker service is down, same as the docker cli that throw correct error:

C:\Users\x\IdeaProjects\mongo-exmple>docker pull node
Using default tag: latest
error during connect: This error may indicate that the docker daemon is not running.: Post "http://%2F%2F.%2Fpipe%2Fdocker_engine/v1.24/images/create?fromImage=node&tag=latest": open //./pipe/docker_engine: The system cannot find 
the file specified.

I had a similar issue and it turned out to be due to Docker server not running. I started the app and then ran docker-compose up and it started working fine. Hope it helps anyone who's caught in a similar situation. :-)

sudo service docker start or
sudo service docker restart

I had the same problem but I managed to solve it when I ran docker server.

set the permission like this,

sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock

By default, the docker command can only be run the root user or by a user in the docker group, which is automatically created during Docker’s installation process. If you want to avoid typing sudo whenever you run the docker command, add your username to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

To apply the new group membership, log out of the server and back in, or type the following:

su - ${USER}

You will be prompted to enter your user’s password to continue.

You don't have permission to use the docker socket, by default only the docker group can access it. You can verify this with ls -l /var/run/docker.sock, which will print something like:

srw-rw----. 1 root docker 0 Oct  4 18:04 /var/run/docker.sock

To be able to access the socket and use Docker, add yourself to the Docker group with the following command:

sudo usermod -a -G docker $(whoami)

Then logout and back in. Docker will now work.

At Linux (at least Ubuntu 18.04.x), you sometimes need to log out and re-login your X user session. Logging out of bash or out of the terminal window and re-logging in is not enough, see for example https://askubuntu.com/questions/1161020/groups-and-groups-user-show-different-groups-dialout-is-missing

Are you sure docker is running on your system? You can get that error when compose is not able to connect to docker via docker socket (if any other way for connection is not defined).

If you are running on linux, usually you can run systemctl status docker to check if docker daemon is running and systemctl start docker to start it.

It would help to tell what OS and docker version are you using.

In Windows exiting from Docker and running it again sometimes helps. Apparently not always docker starts up properly.

Just had the same issue after updating Windows Docker desktop to it's latest version (20.10.2, build 2291f61). It happened that this update disabled the WSL2 integration with my virtual Ubuntu 18.04, which I use to run most projects.

I solved it this way:

1. Open Docker Desktop
2. Go to Settings > Resources > WSL Integration
3. Make sure that your distribution is enabled
4. Restart Docker
5. Without the need of restarting WSL2, docker should work again

When used WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) need to enable 'WSL Integration' for required distro in Windows Docker Desktop (Settings -> Resources-> WSL Integration -> Enable integration with required distros).