Chat with LLMs Using Open WebUI and Ollama

Configure Docker permissions

You should first make sure you can run Docker commands without entering your sudo password.

To test that, open a terminal on the hardware platform and run:

docker ps > /dev/null

Success: If the command returns a blank, then skip ahead to Step 2.

Otherwise, you will see a permission denied error, which means you still need to remove the sudo requirement. To do that, add your user to the docker group with the commands below.

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

Then verify the change is set by testing Docker access again with the command:

docker ps > /dev/null

Download the Open WebUI container image

Pull the container image onto your hardware platform with the command:

docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:ollama

Wait for the image to download, then go to Step 3.

Start the Open WebUI container

Start the Open WebUI container by running:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --gpus=all \
  -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  -v open-webui-ollama:/root/.ollama \
  --name open-webui ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:ollama

This will start the Open WebUI container and make it accessible at http://localhost:8080. You can access the Open WebUI interface from your local web browser.

Create administrator account

Set up the initial administrator account for Open WebUI. This is a local account that you will use to access the Open WebUI interface.

• In the Open WebUI interface, click the Get Started button at the bottom of the screen.
• Fill out the administrator account creation form with your preferred credentials.
• Click the registration button to create your account and access the main interface.

Download and configure a model

You'll then download a language model through Ollama and configure it for use in Open WebUI. This download happens on your hardware platform and may take several minutes.

• Click on the Select a model dropdown in the top left corner of the Open WebUI interface.
• Type gpt-oss:20b in the search field.
• Click the Pull 'gpt-oss:20b' from Ollama.com button that appears.
• Wait for the model download to complete. You can monitor progress in the interface.
• Once complete, select gpt-oss:20b from the model dropdown.

Test the model

You can verify that the setup is working properly by testing model inference through the web interface.

• In the chat text area at the bottom of the Open WebUI interface, enter: Write me a haiku about GPUs.
• Press Enter to send the message and wait for the model's response.

Next steps

Try downloading different models from the Ollama library at https://ollama.com/library.

For agentic workloads, see the Agent-ready Models tab for the recommended model on your hardware platform.

You can also use the Open WebUI Remotely tab so that you can reach the same setup from your laptop through NVIDIA Sync and monitor GPU and memory usage as you try different models.

If Open WebUI reports an update is available, you can update the container image by running:

docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:ollama

Cleanup

Use these steps when you want to completely remove the Open WebUI installation and free up resources. Cleanup is optional rollback—not required to finish the playbook.

Stop and remove the Open WebUI container:

docker stop open-webui
docker rm open-webui

Remove the downloaded images:

docker rmi ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:ollama

Remove persistent data volumes:

docker volume rm open-webui open-webui-ollama