Updating Ollama in an airgapped linux server
Case: Updating Ollama installation in a local server without internet access
TL;DR:
At work this week I had to update an Ollama instance in a airgapped linux server. The machine only had local ssh access. Thankfully ollama docs explained this scenario well.
Step 1 - Remove previous install
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/ollama –> removes the previous Ollama installation. This can also remove the downloaded models unless you do the following.
Previously, to make our downloaded models independent of the Ollama version, I set an environment variable OLLAMA_MODELS such that Ollama can get static models from a shared drive. This made sure that when we do have to update Ollama, we do not need to purge already downloaded models. By default the downloaded models are saved at
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macOS: ~/.ollama/models
Linux: /usr/share/ollama/.ollama/models
Windows: C:\Users\%username%\.ollama\models
The following command would set OLLAMA_MODELS to the users home folder /home/$user/OllamaModels
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export OLLAMA_MODELS="/home/$user/OllamaModels"
Another way to set OLLAMA_MODELS path is to edit the /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service file as show in this walkthrough
Step 2 - Download the specific version
curl -L https://ollama.com/download/ollama-linux-amd64.tgz -o ollama-linux-amd64.tgzcommand downloads the latest version of Ollama to the current folder. One can also download the same via the github releases page: Ollama Releases
Step 3 - Extract contents and copy
sudo tar -C /usr -xzf ollama-linux-amd64.tgz command extracts the contents and copies it to /usr folder.
Step 4 - Check the installation
ollama serve starts the ollama service if it is not already running ollama -v outputs the version of the new version. For example : ollama version is 0.5.7 ollama list will then output all of your previously downloaded models.