Installing Ollama on Linux

Note: A one line installer for Ollama is available by running:
curl https://ollama.ai/install.sh | sh

Download the `ollama` binary

Ollama is distributed as a self-contained binary. Download it to a directory in your PATH:

sudo curl -L https://ollama.ai/download/ollama-linux-amd64 -o /usr/bin/ollama
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/ollama

Start Ollama

Start Ollama by running ollama serve:

ollama serve

Once Ollama is running, run a model in another terminal session:

ollama run llama2

Install CUDA drivers (optional – for Nvidia GPUs)

Download and install CUDA.

Verify that the drivers are installed by running the following command, which should print details about your GPU:

nvidia-smi

Adding Ollama as a startup service (optional)

Create a user for Ollama:

sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false -m -d /usr/share/ollama ollama

Create a service file in /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service:

[Unit]
Description=Ollama Service
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ollama serve
User=ollama
Group=ollama
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
Environment="HOME=/usr/share/ollama"

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ollama

Viewing logs

To view logs of Ollama running as a startup service, run:

journalctl -u ollama

Uninstall

Remove the ollama service:

systemctl stop ollama
systemctl disable ollama
rm /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service

Remove the ollama binary from your bin directory (either /usr/local/bin, /usr/bin, or /bin):

rm /usr/local/bin/ollama

Remove the downloaded models and Ollama service user:

rm /usr/share/ollama
userdel ollama

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