Install and Serve

One install, one daemon, one port

Ollama installs a single binary and runs as a background daemon. After install, an HTTP server listens on localhost:11434. That's the whole picture — there's no separate server-start ritual; the daemon is auto-launched on macOS and Linux.

Install paths by platform

macOS — Homebrew is the cleanest path. brew install ollama installs the CLI plus a launchd service that auto-starts the daemon.
Linux — curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh. Reads the script first if you don't trust pipe-to-shell; it installs systemd unit ollama.service.
Windows — official MSI installer from ollama.com.
Docker — for headless servers. Mount a volume so models persist across container restarts.

Verify the daemon is up

Once installed, the simplest health check is a GET on the root URL. If you see Ollama is running, the daemon is alive and you can move on. If you don't, the most common failure modes are: launchd / systemd failed to start, port 11434 is taken, or the install didn't add the launch agent on macOS.

Code

Install + verify·bash

# macOS — Homebrew
brew install ollama

# Linux — official install script
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

# Docker — persistent volume
docker run -d \
  -v ollama:/root/.ollama \
  -p 11434:11434 \
  --name ollama ollama/ollama

# Verify the daemon (any platform)
curl -s http://localhost:11434
# expected: "Ollama is running"

# Check the version
ollama --version

One install, one daemon, one port

Install paths by platform

Verify the daemon is up

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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