I’m running a docker-compose stack on Windows (Docker Desktop). The primary service in this stack communicates with an external server to advertise the presence of the child process. When I first start Docker Desktop, and then the stack via the docker-compose command, the primary service immedidately connects to the remote/external server and informs it of availability. When I stop the stack with docker-compose down, everything shuts down as you might expect. However, when I restart the stack, the local containers will not communicate with the external server. There are apparently no firewall, port forwarding, tunneling, or pass-through rule issues. I cannot seem to change any setting to force this communication to occur, but as soon as I restart Docker Desktop (via the Restart option on the system tray icon), my containers will immediately start communicating with the external server again. Once the containers establish communication, it’s a rock solid connection and never drops. But as soon as I take the stack down and put it back up, communication will not happen without restarting Docker Desktop.

I’m trying to check whether docker-compose is present using the approach described here.