new ollama storage post

_posts/2025-01-04-ollama-model-storage.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+title: "changing default ollama storage location on linux"
+date: 2025-01-04
+tags: ollama systemd
+---
+
+I was downloading some large [ollama](https://ollama.com/){:target="_blank"} models and ran out of space on my linux machine.
+I then realized that the default model storage location is `/usr/share`.
+This path is mounted on my OS disk and there is not much storage there so I wanted the downloaded models to be stored elsewhere.
+It turns out this is a [common request](https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/680){:target="_blank"}
+and it can be done using an `OLLAMA_MODELS` environment variable.
+There are some [docs](https://github.com/ollama/ollama/blob/main/docs/faq.md#how-do-i-configure-ollama-server){:target="_blank"} on how to do it, but it took me a few tries.
+
+I have a 2TB data disk mounted at `/mnt/sdb`. I made an `ollama` directory there, gave it 755 permissions and made `ollama` the owner. 
+
+``` bash
+sudo chmod o+x /mnt/sdb
+sudo mkdir /mnt/sdb/ollama
+sudo chmod -R 755 /mnt/sdb/ollama
+sudo chown -R ollama:ollama /mnt/sdb/ollama
+```
+
+I edited the ollama service config with,
+
+``` bash
+sudo systemctl edit ollama
+```
+
+and added the following lines (new lines are between the commented out lines)
+
+
+```
+### Editing /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/override.conf
+### Anything between here and the comment below will become the contents of the drop-in file
+
+[Service]
+Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=/mnt/sdb/ollama"
+
+### Edits below this comment will be discarded
+```
+
+After that I restarted things, 
+
+``` bash
+sudo systemctl daemon-reload 
+sudo systemctl restart ollama
+```
+
+Now new `ollama run` or `ollama pull` commands will use the `/mnd/sdb/ollama` directory for storage.
+
+Also very helpful, you can check out the ollama service logs using, 
+
+``` bash
+sudo journalctl -u ollama.service
+```