ollama

Unofficial Debian package repository documentation

Note

The sources.list codename has changed from Debian distro names (like bookworm) to stable. Ollama themselves don't specify what releases/distros they support, so I've changed to using an agnostic one too. bookworm will remain for a while, and then be removed.

Overview

Setting up this repository involves three simple steps:

  1. Add the GPG key
  2. Add the repository source
  3. Install ollama

Repository setup

Add GPG key

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lingfish/ollama-deb/refs/heads/main/repository-key.asc | sudo gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/ollama-repo.gpg --dearmor

Add repository

Click to expand which format you need:

Pre deb822 file format 
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/ollama-repo.gpg] https://ollama-repo.jason-9eb.workers.dev/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ollama.list
New deb822 file format 
cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ollama.sources
Types: deb
URIs: https://ollama-repo.jason-9eb.workers.dev/apt/
Suites: stable
Components: main
Architectures: amd64
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/ollama-repo.gpg
EOF

Of course, you could just paste the above into your favourite editor and save as root.

Update package lists

sudo apt update

Note

The repo URL looks a bit unusual. See here for details. This URL points to a Cloudflare worker. I do this in my free time, and I'm not willing to pay for hosting the (abnormally-large) package files.

Package installation

Install ollama directly from the repository:

sudo apt install ollama

Warning

The first GPU package that this ollama package recommends is libollama-nvidia, and so if none are requested, this will be installed by default. If you don't need any GPU support, remove it afterwards, or add --no-install-recommends to your apt command.

To use a GPU, you'll also need one of the following packages, depending on your GPU make:

Other notes

APT pinning

If you don't want release candidates and only "stable" versions, add the following to, say, /etc/apt/preferences.d/ollama:

Package: /./
Pin: origin ollama-repo.jason-9eb.workers.dev
Pin: version /rc/
Pin-Priority: -1

And then just do the usual apt update.

The Cloudflare worker

Due to the way APT repos work, and how hosting companies cost money, I came up with a novel way to "host" the repo.

The repo is hosted on a Cloudflare R2 bucket — but only the repo skeleton files, not the (massive) deb files.

Tip

When APT requests a package file, the Cloudflare worker redirects the request to a GitHub Releases download URL. This keeps hosting costs minimal while still serving the actual package files from GitHub's infrastructure.

This is the code for the Cloudflare worker:

export default {
  async fetch(request, env) {
    const url = new URL(request.url);
    const key = decodeURIComponent(url.pathname.slice(1));

    switch (request.method) {
      case "GET":
        if (key.includes("apt/pool/main/o/ollama/")) {
          const filename = key.split('/').pop()
          const githubFormattedFilename = filename.replace('~', '-').replace('-rc', '.rc')
          const newUrl = `https://github.com/lingfish/ollama-deb/releases/download/v${githubFormattedFilename.replace(/^[^_]*_/, '').replace('_amd64.deb', '').replace('.rc', '-rc')}/` + githubFormattedFilename
          return Response.redirect(newUrl, 302);
        }
        const object = await env.MY_BUCKET.get(key);

        if (object === null) {
          return new Response("Object Not Found", { status: 404 });
        }

        const headers = new Headers();
        object.writeHttpMetadata(headers);
        headers.set("etag", object.httpEtag);

        return new Response(object.body, { headers });

      default:
        return new Response("Method Not Allowed", {
          status: 405,
          headers: { Allow: "GET" },
        });
    }
  },
};