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README.md

Local LLaMA Server Setup Documentation

TL;DR: A guide to setting up a server for running local language models using ollama.

Table of Contents

About

This repository outlines the steps to run a server for running local language models. It uses Debian specifically, but most Linux distros should follow a very similar process. It aims to be a guide for Linux beginners like me who are setting up a server for the first time.

The process involves installing the NVIDIA drivers, setting the GPU power limit, and configuring the server to run ollama at boot. It also includes setting up auto-login and scheduling the init.bash script to run at boot. All these settings are based on my ideal setup for a language model server that runs most of the day but a lot can be customized to suit your needs. For example, you can use any OpenAI-compatible server like llama.cpp or LM Studio instead of ollama.

System Requirements

Any modern CPU and GPU combination should work for this guide. Previously, compatibility with AMD GPUs was an issue but the latest releases of ollama have worked through this and AMD GPUs are now supported natively.

For reference, this guide was built around the following system:

  • CPU: Intel Core i5-12600KF
  • Memory: 32GB 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM
  • Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX 3090 24GB

Note for AMD users: Power limiting is skipped for AMD GPUs as AMD has recently made it difficult to set power limits on their GPUs. Naturally, skip any steps involving nvidia-smi or nvidia-persistenced and the power limit in the init.bash script.

Note for CPU-only users: You can skip the driver installation and power limiting steps. The rest of the guide should work as expected.

Prerequisites

  • Fresh install of Debian
  • Internet connection
  • Basic understanding of the Linux terminal
  • Peripherals like a monitor, keyboard, and mouse

To install Debian on your newly built server hardware,

  • Download the Debian ISO from the official website.
  • Create a bootable USB using a tool like Rufus for Windows or Balena Etcher for MacOS.
  • Boot into the USB and install Debian.

For a more detailed guide on installing Debian, refer to the official documentation. For those who aren't yet experienced with Linux, I recommend using the graphical installer - you will be given an option between the text-based installer and graphical installer.

I also recommend installing a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE for ease of use. Other options like GNOME or KDE are also available - GNOME may be a better option for those using their server as a primary workstation as it is more feature-rich (and, as such, heavier) than XFCE.

Essential Setup

  1. Update the system

    • Run the following command: 
      sudo apt update

  2. Install drivers

    • Nvidia

      • Run the following commands: 
        apt install linux-headers-amd64
apt install nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree
      • Reboot the server.
      • Run the following command to verify the installation: 
        nvidia-smi

    • AMD

      • Run the following commands: 
        deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free-firmware
apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers xserver-xorg-video-all
      • Reboot the server.

  3. Install ollama

    • Download ollama from the official repository: 
      curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
    • (Recommended) We want our API endpoint to be reachable by the rest of the LAN. For ollama, this means setting OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0 in the ollama.service.
      • Run the following command to edit the service: 
        systemctl edit ollama.service
      • Find the [Service] section and add Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0" under it. It should look like this: 
        [Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0"
      • Save and exit.
      • Reload the environment. 
        systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart ollama

  4. Create the init.bash script

    This script will be run at boot to set the GPU power limit and start the server using ollama. We set the GPU power limit lower because it has been seen in testing and inference that there is only a 5-15% performance decrease for a 30% reduction in power consumption. This is especially important for servers that are running 24/7.

    • Run the following commands:

      touch init.bash
nano init.bash

    • Add the following lines to the script:

      #!/bin/bash
sudo nvidia-smi -pm 1
sudo nvidia-smi -pl (power limit)
ollama run (model)
ollama serve

      Replace (power limit) with the desired power limit in watts. For example, sudo nvidia-smi -pl 250.

      Replace (model) with the name of the model you want to run. For example, ollama run mistral:latest.

      For multiple GPUs, modify the script to set the power limit for each GPU:

      sudo nvidia-smi -i 0 -pl (power limit)
sudo nvidia-smi -i 1 -pl (power limit)

    • Save and exit the script.

    • Make the script executable:

      chmod +x init.bash

  5. Add init.bash to the crontab

    Adding the init.bash script to the crontab will schedule it to run at boot.

    • Run the following command:

      crontab -e

    • Add the following line to the file:

      @reboot /path/to/init.bash

      Replace /path/to/init.bash with the path to the init.bash script.

    • (Optional) Add the following line to shutdown the server at 12am:

      0 0 * * * /sbin/shutdown -h now

    • Save and exit the file.

  6. Give nvidia-persistenced and nvidia-smi passwordless sudo permissions

    We want init.bash to run the nvidia-smi commands without having to enter a password. This is done by editing the sudoers file.

    AMD users can skip this step as power limiting is not supported on AMD GPUs.

    • Run the following command:

      sudo visudo

    • Add the following lines to the file:

      (username) ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/nvidia-persistenced
(username) ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/nvidia-smi

      Replace (username) with your username.

      Important

      : Ensure that you add these lines AFTER %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL. The order of the lines in the file matters - the last matching line will be used so if you add these lines before %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL, they will be ignored.

    • Save and exit the file.

  7. Configure auto-login

    When the server boots up, we want it to automatically log in to a user account and run the init.bash script. This is done by configuring the lightdm display manager.

    • Run the following command: 
      sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
    • Find the following commented line. It should be in the [Seat:*] section. 
      # autologin-user=
    • Uncomment the line and add your username: 
      autologin-user=(username)

      Replace (username) with your username.

    • Save and exit the file.

Additional Setup

  • SSH

    Enabling SSH allows you to connect to the server remotely. After configuring SSH, you can connect to the server from another device on the same network using an SSH client like PuTTY or the terminal. This lets you run your server headlessly without needing a monitor, keyboard, or mouse after the initial setup.

    On the server:

    • Run the following command: 
      sudo apt install openssh-server
    • Start the SSH service: 
      sudo systemctl start ssh
    • Enable the SSH service to start at boot: 
      sudo systemctl enable ssh
    • Find the server's IP address: 
      ip a

    On the client:

    • Connect to the server using SSH: 
      ssh (username)@(ip address)

      Replace (username) with your username and (ip address) with the server's IP address.

    If you expect to tunnel into your server often, I highly recommend following this guide to enable passwordless SSH using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id. It worked perfectly on my Debian system despite having been written for Raspberry Pi OS.

  • Firewall

    Setting up a firewall is essential for securing your server. The Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) is a simple and easy-to-use firewall for Linux. You can use UFW to allow or deny incoming and outgoing traffic to and from your server.

    • Install UFW: 
      sudo apt install ufw
    • Allow SSH, HTTPS, and any other ports you need: 
      sudo ufw allow ssh https 3000 11434 80 8080
      Here, we're allowing SSH (port 22), HTTPS (port 443), Open WebUI (port 3000), Ollama API (port 11434), HTTP (port 80), and Docker (port 8080). You can add or remove ports as needed.
    • Enable UFW: 
      sudo ufw enable
    • Check the status of UFW: 
      sudo ufw status

    Refer to this guide for more information on setting up UFW.

  • Open WebUI

    In this step, we'll install Docker and Open WebUI. Docker is a containerization platform that allows you to run applications in isolated environments. Open WebUI is a web-based interface for managing Ollama models and chats, and provides a beautiful, performant UI for communicating with your models.

    You will want to do this if you want to access your models from a web interface. If you're fine with using the command line or want to consume models through a plugin/extension, you can skip this step.

    Docker

    This subsection follows this guide to install Docker Engine on Debian.

    • Run the following commands: 
      # Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
    • Install the Docker packages: 
      sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
    • Verify the installation: 
      sudo docker run hello-world

    Open WebUI

    Now that Docker is installed, we can install Open WebUI. Run the following command:

    docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

    You can access it by navigating to http://localhost:3000 in your browser or http://(server IP):3000 from another device on the same network. There's no need to add this to the init.bash script as Open WebUI will start automatically at boot via Docker Engine.

    Read more about Open WebUI here.

Accessing Ollama

This section deals with accessing ollama from an extension/application/plugin where you have to specify the base URL to access your ollama models. Accessing ollama on the server itself is trivial. To test your endpoint, simply run:

curl http://localhost:11434/api/generate -d '{
  "model": "llama2",
  "prompt":"Why is the sky blue?"
}'

Replace llama2 with your preferred model.

Assuming the OLLAMA_HOST environment variable has been set to 0.0.0.0, accessing ollama from anywhere on the network is still trivial! Simply replace localhost with your server's IP.

Refer to Ollama's REST API docs for more information on the entire API.

Troubleshooting

  • Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS if you're having trouble with the Nvidia drivers not working. For me, all packages were at the latest versions and nvidia-detect was able to find my GPU correctly, but nvidia-smi kept returning the NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver error. Disabling Secure Boot fixed this for me. Better practice than disabling Secure Boot is to sign the Nvidia drivers yourself but I didn't want to go through that process for a non-critical server that can afford to have Secure Boot disabled.
  • If you receive the Failed to open "/etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/.#override.confb927ee3c846beff8": Permission denied error from Ollama after running systemctl edit ollama.service, simply creating the file works to eliminate it. Use the following steps to edit the file.
    • Run: 
      sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/override.conf
    • Retry the remaining steps.
  • If you still can't connect to your API endpoint, check your firewall settings. This guide to UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) on Debian is a good resource.
  • If you encounter an issue using ssh-copy-id to set up passwordless SSH, try running ssh-keygen -t rsa on the client before running ssh-copy-id. This generates the RSA key pair that ssh-copy-id needs to copy to the server.

Monitoring

  • To monitor GPU usage, power draw, and temperature, you can use the nvidia-smi command. To monitor GPU usage, run: 
    watch -n 1 nvidia-smi
    This will update the GPU usage every second without cluttering the terminal environment. Press Ctrl+C to exit.

Notes

  • This is my first foray into setting up a server and ever working with Linux so there may be better ways to do some of the steps. I will update this repository as I learn more.
  • I chose Debian because it is, apparently, one of the most stable Linux distros. I also went with an XFCE desktop environment because it is lightweight and I wasn't yet comfortable going full command line.
  • The power draw of my EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3090 was 350W at stock settings. I set the power limit to 250W and the performance decrease was negligible for my use case, which is primarily code completion in VS Code and the Q&A via chat.
  • Use a user for auto-login, don't log in as root unless for a specific reason.

References

Downloading Nvidia drivers:

Downloading AMD drivers:

Secure Boot:

Monitoring GPU usage, power draw:

Passwordless sudo:

Auto-login:

Expose Ollama to LAN:

Firewall:

Passwordless ssh:

Docs:

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End-to-end documentation to set up your own local & fully private LLM server on Debian. Equipped with chat, web search, RAG, model management, MCP servers, image generation, and TTS.
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