make ollama listen to external in ubuntu

ollama_ubuntu.md

Problem

After installed ollama in ubuntu, the usual use will be fine, but when want to access it from another machine (like from your laptop to home lab server), will see

yli@yli-hx90g:~$ curl http://192.168.0.163:11434/api/generate -d '{"model": "deepseek-r1:7b", "keep_alive": -1}'
curl: (7) Failed to connect to 192.168.0.163 port 11434 after 3 ms: Connection refused

this is because the daemon ollama started by systemctl is not setting OLLAMA_HOST correctly (default is 127.0.0.1:11434)

How to solve

sudo systemctl edit ollama.service

then add following

[Service]
# can change the port 11434 to other port like 8080
Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0:11434"
# if want to customize your model store location can remove the comment # of below
# Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=/path/to/your/models"

after save, do

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart ollama

then try again, it will work

yli@yli-hx90g:~$ curl http://192.168.0.163:11434/api/generate -d '{"model": "deepseek-r1:7b", "keep_alive": -1}'
{"model":"deepseek-r1:7b","created_at":"2025-05-15T23:47:26.969733557Z","response":"","done":true,"done_reason":"load"}

Check which host and port your ollama is listening to

with systemctrl can

journalctl -u ollama.service

and looking for line INFO server config env=, and then further to find OLLAMA_HOST:http://...