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Ensure only one Ollama model is loaded in memory

Source: R/ollama_live.R
ensure_only_ollama_model_loaded.Rd

ensure_only_ollama_model_loaded() is a small convenience helper for managing memory when working with large local models via Ollama. It inspects the current set of active models using the ollama ps command and attempts to unload any models that are not the one you specify.

Usage

ensure_only_ollama_model_loaded(model, verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

model

Character scalar giving the Ollama model name that should remain loaded (for example "mistral-small3.2:24b", "qwen3:32b", "gemma3:27b"). All other models currently reported by ollama ps will be candidates for unloading.

verbose

Logical; if TRUE (the default), the function prints informational messages about the models detected and any unload operations performed. If FALSE, the function runs quietly.

Value

Invisibly returns a character vector containing the names of models that were requested to be unloaded (i.e., those passed to ollama stop). If no models were unloaded, an empty character vector is returned.

Details

This can be useful when running multiple large models (for example "mistral-small3.2:24b", "qwen3:32b", "gemma3:27b") on a single machine, where keeping all of them loaded simultaneously may exhaust GPU or system memory.

The function is intentionally conservative:

  • If the ollama command is not available on the system or ollama ps returns an error or empty output, no action is taken and a message is printed when verbose = TRUE.

  • If no active models are reported, no action is taken.

  • Only models with names different from model are passed to ollama stop <name>.

This helper is not called automatically by the package; it is intended to be used programmatically in development scripts and ad hoc workflows before running comparisons with ollama_compare_pair_live() or submit_ollama_pairs_live().

This function relies on the ollama command-line interface being available on the system PATH. If the command cannot be executed or returns a non-zero status code, the function will issue a message (when verbose = TRUE) and return without making any changes.

The exact output format of ollama ps is treated as an implementation detail: this helper assumes that the first non-empty line is a header and that subsequent non-empty lines begin with the model name as the first whitespace-separated field. If the format changes in a future version of Ollama, parsing may fail and the function will simply fall back to doing nothing.

Because ollama stop affects the global Ollama server state for the current machine, you should only use this helper in environments where you are comfortable unloading models that might be in use by other processes.

See also

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Keep only mistral-small3.2:24b loaded in Ollama, unloading any
# other active models
ensure_only_ollama_model_loaded("mistral-small3.2:24b")
} # }