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Compose error "HTTP request took too long to complete"

Freshabout 8 years ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score83%
83%

Problem

Lately I've been noticing the following error message quite frequently with `docker-compose up`: [code block] Increasing the `COMPOSE_HTTP_TIMEOUT` only seems to delay the error. Is this a known issue and/or is there a workaround for this? I'm using ubuntu 16.04, please find below the output of `docker-compose version` and `docker version`. I'd also like to note that I see this issue with docker for mac beta, docker-machine, etc. [code block] [code block]

Error Output

error message quite frequently with `docker-compose up`:

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
High Confidence Fix
78% confidence100% success rate6 verificationsLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: Compose error "HTTP request took too long to complete"

Low Risk

@aaronjensen I can confirm that removing the `tty: true` line from the `docker-compose.yaml` file resolved the issue for me. As a workaround for the tty, I defined `TERM=xterm` to the containers environment. Do you see any issues with that?

78

Trust Score

6 verifications

100% success
  1. 1

    @aaronjensen I can confirm that removing the `tty: true` line from the `docker-c

    @aaronjensen I can confirm that removing the `tty: true` line from the `docker-compose.yaml` file resolved the issue for me. As a workaround for the tty, I defined `TERM=xterm` to the containers environment. Do you see any issues with that?

Validation

Resolved in docker/compose GitHub issue #3633. Community reactions: 13 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 6
Partial: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Environment

Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

dockerdocker-composecontainers