What is wrong in my docker-compose.yml file?

Question

I need a little bit of help to find why my docker-compose.yml doesn't work. The story is that I have a docker-compose.yml who works (and who create Grafana, Prometheus, nodeexporter, cAdvisor and alertManager) then I want to do one without Grafana so I just removed all the Grafana things of the file but it doesn't work.

the one who works :

version: '2'

networks:
  monitor-net:
    driver: bridge

volumes:
    prometheus_data: {}
    grafana_data: {}

services:

  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus
    container_name: prometheus
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus/:/etc/prometheus/
      - prometheus_data:/prometheus
    command:
      - '-config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml'
      - '-storage.local.path=/prometheus'
      - '-alertmanager.url=http://alertmanager:9093'
      - '-storage.local.memory-chunks=100000'
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9090
    ports:
      - 9090:9090
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  alertmanager:
    image: prom/alertmanager
    container_name: alertmanager
    volumes: 
      - ./alertmanager/:/etc/alertmanager/
    command:
      - '-config.file=/etc/alertmanager/config.yml'
      - '-storage.path=/alertmanager'
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9093
    ports:
      - 9093:9093
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  nodeexporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter
    container_name: nodeexporter
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9100
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  cadvisor:
    image: google/cadvisor:v0.24.1
    container_name: cadvisor
    volumes:
      - /:/rootfs:ro
      - /var/run:/var/run:rw
      - /sys:/sys:ro
      - /var/lib/docker/:/var/lib/docker:ro
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 8080
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana
    container_name: grafana
    volumes:
      - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana
    env_file:
      - user.config
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 3000
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

The one who doesn't work:

version: '2'

networks:
  monitor-net:
    driver: bridge

volumes:
    prometheus_data: {}

services:

  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus
    container_name: prometheus
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus/:/etc/prometheus/
      - prometheus_data:/prometheus
    command:
      - '-config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml'
      - '-storage.local.path=/prometheus'
      - '-alertmanager.url=http://alertmanager:9093'
      - '-storage.local.memory-chunks=100000'
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9090
    ports:
      - 9090:9090
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  alertmanager:
    image: prom/alertmanager
    container_name: alertmanager
    volumes:
      - ./alertmanager/:/etc/alertmanager/
    command:
      - '-config.file=/etc/alertmanager/config.yml'
      - '-storage.path=/alertmanager'
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9093
    ports:
      - 9093:9093
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  nodeexporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter
    container_name: nodeexporter
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 9100
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

  cadvisor:
    image: google/cadvisor
    container_name: cadvisor
    volumes:
      - /:/rootfs:ro
      - /var/run:/var/run:rw
      - /sys:/sys:ro
      - /var/lib/docker/:/var/lib/docker:ro
    restart: unless-stopped
    expose:
      - 8080
    networks:
      - monitor-net
    labels:
      org.label-schema.group: "monitoring"

With the second one the container Prometheus can't run and the logs are:

level=info msg="Starting prometheus (version=1.5.2, branch=master, revision=bd1182d29f462c39544f94cc822830e1c64cf55b)" source="main.go:75"
level=info msg="Build context (go=go1.7.5, user=root@1a01c5f68840, date=20170220-07:00:00)" source="main.go:76"
level=info msg="Loading configuration file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml" source="main.go:248"
level=error msg="Error opening memory series storage: leveldb: manifest corrupted (field 'comparer'): missing [file=MANIFEST-000009]" source="main.go:182"

Answer 1

The fact that Prometheus at least starts and then errors out means that your compose files is probably correct.

It seems to at least try to load the configuration file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml and fails doing so.

In the compose file I see that it adds a host volume which is expected to exist on your host system at location ./prometheus/ . Did you also copy this folder and it's contents? If yes, did you verify that the configuration is correct and is expected to work without Grafana? Also it's important what your current directory is when you run docker-compose, it must be where the ./prometheus/ directory is located.