invalid mount config for type "volume": invalid mount path: 'mongodb-data' mount path must be absolute

Question

I have the following docker-compose file starting the first time the containers start as expected:

version: "3.8"


volumes:
  mongodb-data:
    name: mongodb-data

networks:
  mongodb_network:
    name: mongodb_network


services:

  mongodb:
    image: mongo:4.4.5-bionic
    container_name: mongodb
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE: provider
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=pass12345
    volumes:
      - mongodb-data:/data/db
    networks:
      - mongodb_network
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    healthcheck:
      test: echo 'db.runCommand("ping").ok' | mongo 10.10.10.60:27017/test --quiet
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 10s

  mongo-express:
    image: mongo-express:0.54.0
    container_name: mongo-express
    environment:
      - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_SERVER=mongodb
      - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_ENABLE_ADMIN=true
      - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_ADMINUSERNAME=root
      - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_ADMINPASSWORD=pass12345
      - ME_CONFIG_BASICAUTH_USERNAME=admin
      - ME_CONFIG_BASICAUTH_PASSWORD=admin123
    volumes:
      - mongodb-data
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
    networks:
      - mongodb_network
    ports:
      - 8081:8081
    healthcheck:
      test:  wget --quiet --tries=3 --spider http://admin:admin123@10.10.10.60:8081 || exit 1
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 10s

After the restart the containers it complains:

ERROR: for mongo-express  Cannot create container for service mongo-express: invalid volume specification: '33e23b77e1a84955e2180d502bdcf1f34589ddd1a99172629e968f10d8208d3d:mongodb-data:rw': invalid mount config for type "volume": invalid mount path: 'mongodb-data' mount path must be absolute

ERROR: for mongo-express  Cannot create container for service mongo-express: invalid volume specification: '33e23b77e1a84955e2180d502bdcf1f34589ddd1a99172629e968f10d8208d3d:mongodb-data:rw': invalid mount config for type "volume": invalid mount path: 'mongodb-data' mount path must be absolute
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.

What is missing?

Answer 1

The volumes: block in the mongo-express service is confusing Compose, and you should be able to delete it.

volumes:
  - mongodb-data

Without a colon : in the volume specification, this looks like it's trying to create an anonymous volume; but that generally needs an absolute path. Compose will preserve these anonymous volumes across restarts, but the second time you try to run docker-compose up it sends the Docker API a mount string that doesn't really make sense in the API.

This looks like you're trying to mount the database's underlying data into an application that talks to the database's API. You don't need that, and you can just delete this volumes: block.