Updating Ollama in an airgapped linux server

A walkthrough
llm
Author

Jeevith Hegde

Published

February 17, 2025

Case: Updating Ollama installation in a local server without internet access

TL;DR

sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/ollama 
curl -L https://ollama.com/download/ollama-linux-amd64.tgz -o ollama-linux-amd64.tgz
sudo tar -C /usr -xzf ollama-linux-amd64.tgz 
ollama serve
ollama -v

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

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

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.

References