LLM on The Danesh Project https://thedaneshproject.com/tags/llm/ Recent content in LLM on The Danesh Project The Danesh Project https://thedaneshproject.com/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E https://thedaneshproject.com/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E Hugo en Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:24:57 -0500 Changing the Default Ollama Models Directory https://thedaneshproject.com/posts/changing-the-default-ollama-models-directory/ Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500 https://thedaneshproject.com/posts/changing-the-default-ollama-models-directory/ How to redirect Ollama's model storage to a separate drive using a systemd drop-in, so models survive a full system rebuild. I have a second drive mounted at /mnt/data that survives system rebuilds. Ollama models are large — pulling everything again from scratch after a reinstall is painful — so I wanted to move the model storage there. Ollama respects the OLLAMA_MODELS environment variable, and since it runs as a systemd service, the cleanest way to set that is with a drop-in override.

Creating the Drop-in

systemd drop-ins let you override parts of a unit file without touching the original. The convention is a directory named <unit>.d/ under /etc/systemd/system/:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d
sudo nvim /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/models_location_override.conf

Contents of models_location_override.conf:

[Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=/mnt/data/ollama/models"

Make sure the path matches your actual mount point. I initially wrote /data/ollama/models (missing the /mnt prefix) and got this on the first restart:

Error: mkdir /data: permission denied: ensure path elements are traversable

Reloading and Restarting

Whenever a unit file or drop-in changes on disk, systemd needs to be told:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart ollama.service

The service came up fine after fixing the path, but running ollama list still failed:

Error: mkdir /mnt/data/ollama/models/manifests: permission denied

Fixing Permissions

Ollama runs as the ollama user, so the target directory needs to be owned by that user. I had created /mnt/data/ollama as my own user earlier:

sudo chown -Rv ollama:ollama /mnt/data/ollama

Then a final restart:

sudo systemctl restart ollama.service

Verifying

sudo systemctl status ollama.service

The drop-in shows up in the status output confirming it’s active:

Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d
         └─models_location_override.conf
Active: active (running)

Pulling a model confirms writes are going to the new location:

ollama pull gemma4

Summary

Three steps:

  1. Create /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/models_location_override.conf with Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=<your path>"
  2. sudo chown -R ollama:ollama <your path> — the ollama service user needs write access
  3. sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart ollama.service
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