Ensure a local Ollama server is running — ensure_ollama

Checks whether an Ollama server is reachable at host:port. If not, attempts to start it using the platform-appropriate command and polls until the server responds (or timeout is reached). Call this once at the top of an R session before classifying with model_source = "ollama".

Usage

ensure_ollama_running(
  auto_start = TRUE,
  timeout = 30,
  host = "localhost",
  port = 11434L,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

auto_start: Logical. If TRUE (default), attempt to launch Ollama when not running. If FALSE, just check and error if not running.
timeout: Numeric. Seconds to wait for Ollama to become ready after auto_start. Default 30.
host: Character. Hostname Ollama is reachable on. Default "localhost".
port: Integer. Port Ollama is reachable on. Default 11434L.
verbose: Logical. Print status messages. Default TRUE.

Value

Invisibly returns TRUE when Ollama is running.

Details

Platform start commands:

macOS — open -a Ollama (launches the Ollama.app daemon). Falls back to ollama serve if the app is not installed.
Linux — ollama serve (run in a detached process).
Windows — ollama serve.

If Ollama is not installed, the function returns a clear error message linking to https://ollama.com.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Ensure Ollama is up before classifying with a local model
ensure_ollama_running()

results <- classify(
  input_data   = c("text 1", "text 2"),
  categories   = c("Positive", "Negative", "Neutral"),
  user_model   = "qwen2.5:7b",
  model_source = "ollama"
)

# Just check without auto-starting
ensure_ollama_running(auto_start = FALSE)
} # }