docker compose down fails due to "permission denied"

I was able to work around the problem by running:

sudo killall docker-containerd-shim

And then docker-compose down started working for me.

I found the solution in this bug report, and it seems that it involves a backport of a fix to the runc code.

EDIT

It seems that the root cause of these problems on my system was the Docker snap image on my Ubuntu 18.04 installation. I completely removed the snap image and reinstalled Docker using https://get.docker.io, and I no longer encounter these problems. In the meantime, the rest of my answer above worked for me as a workaround.

Somehow this worked for me.

$ sudo killall containerd-shim

2021: in my case, I am using the

sudo aa-remove-unknown

then, run

sudo docker-compose down

then, the application down successfully