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Ubuntu & Ollama & Obsidian: Your Local AI Powerhouse

My pc runs on Ubuntu 24.04 and one of my favorite things to do in my pc is take notes and annotations using Obsidian. Even though I have a modest pc with a low end graphics card, instead of using a paid cloud AI service, I run ollama with local LLMs - it might be slow but is nevertheless useful.

But then I ran into a problem when trying to use obsidian plugins that run AI on ollama local LLMs. After running ollama serve in the terminal, the following error would show up:

Error: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:11434: bind: address already in use

I tried some tweaking here and there, like changing the port address in the command line, but it didn't work as I needed it to.

Turns out the solution is simpler than I thought. Here is how it works. When you install ollama on ubuntu 24.04 it will install itself as a systemd service.

Ollama runs in the background

Ubuntu 24.04 uses systemd, so Ollama automatically starts as a service when the pc starts. Think of it like a silent workhorse, always ready to process your AI requests.

No need to manually start the server

My mistake was typing ollama serve every time. There's no need for it. It's already running on port 11434. Trying to start it again will just give you an error because it's already busy. 

Check ollama status as a systemd service

Ollama service status can be checked by sudo systemctl status ollama.service on the terminal.

Need to tweak things? 

Edit the Ollama service file: sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service

Example: Want to change the port Ollama listens on? Add this line to the [Service] section:
 

Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=127.0.0.1:5050"
Then, restart the service: sudo systemctl restart ollama.service

Now, let's talk Obsidian plugins

Many plugins are designed to work with local LLMs like Ollama. Just point them to 127.0.0.1:11434 (or your custom port if you changed it) and you're good to go! No need to run anything on the terminal.
I've been using SystemSculpt AI since it allows using local LLM through ollama and also free cloud services such as Groq and OpenRouter.

Learn more about ollama

Learn how to install, update and download LLMs.


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