Install any LLM in a custom directory with Ollama on Linux

Every PC's main drive is almost full (atleast mine). I wanted to install deepseek on my local machine. But my main drive on which OS(Ubuntu 24.04) is installed does not have enough space. So I wanted to install the model in another directory(disk).

So I googled for it. I found the solution at here . I then tried multiple times to succeed. So I want to write a blog so it can save others time.

• Overriding the configuration will result in loosing the existing models you have downloaded. I have not tried this, but models should work if we move all contents from /usr/share/ollama/.ollama(default directory) to our new directory after doing below steps. Please let me know via comments, if it works.

Step 1: Open override.conf file

• You need to add an environment variable that overrides the default directory and also we need to specify the use
• Run the below command to open /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/override.conf file.

sudo systemctl edit ollama.service

• The default one looks like

### Editing /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/override.conf
### Anything between here and the comment below will become the contents of the>


### Edits below this comment will be discarded


### /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service
# [Unit]
# Description=Ollama Service
# After=network-online.target
# 
# [Service]
# ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ollama serve
# User=ollama
# Group=ollama
# Restart=always
# RestartSec=3
# Environment="PATH=/home/nikki/.nvm/versions/node/v20.17.0/bin:/home/nikki/.nv>
# 
# [Install]
# WantedBy=default.target

• It specifies that anything written below line:5 will be discarded. So we need to write our env var before that comment. ### Step 2: Add env variables
• You need to add environment variable under [Service].
• After adding the env vars, the file looks like

### Editing /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service.d/override.conf
### Anything between here and the comment below will become the contents of the>

[Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=/media/nikki/mymodels"
User=nikki
Group=nikki

### Edits below this comment will be discarded


### /etc/systemd/system/ollama.service
# [Unit]
# Description=Ollama Service
# After=network-online.target
# 
# [Service]
# ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ollama serve
# User=ollama
# Group=ollama
# Restart=always
# RestartSec=3
# Environment="PATH=/home/nikki/.nvm/versions/node/v20.17.0/bin:/home/nikki/.nv>
# 
# [Install]
# WantedBy=default.target

Step 3: Save file

• I think by default the terminal opens nano file editor. Follow below steps to save file.
• Press Ctrl + x
• Press y
• Press Enter
• If your default editor is vi/vim, then follow
• Press Ctrl + c
• Enter :wq to write and quit the editor
• Doing this will edit the override.conf file ### Step 4: Restart the daemon
• You need to restart the daemon to apply the changes.

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart ollama

To learn more about daemon, refer this .

• systemctl daemon-reload tells systemd to reload its configurations.
• systemctl restart ollama restarts(start and then start immediately) the service named ollama. ### Step 5: (Optional) Give permissions to new directory
• Give access to the new directory, if not present

sudo chmod 755 /media/nikki/mymodels

• After execution, the permission will become

drwxr-xr-x 1 nikki nikki 4096 Jan 30 03:57 /media/nikki/mymodels

• r => read
• w => write

• x => execute

• d: It's a directory.

• rwx: Owner can read, write, and execute.

• r-x: Group can read and execute, but not write.

• r-x: Others can read and execute, but not write.

  Step 6: Download the model and run

• ollama is such an amazing tool that made naive users to run LLMs locally.

• Running below command will pull the model's binary from ollama registry
  

ollama run deepseek-r1:1.5b

• Refer ollama to browse a model for your requirements.
• To list all running models, run below command

ollama list

If you like my article, please share and follow me. If you have any doubts, let me know via comments.