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Open WebUI with Ollama

15 MIN

Install Open WebUI and use Ollama to chat with models on your Spark

Configure Docker permissions

To easily manage containers without sudo, you must be in the docker group. If you choose to skip this step, you will need to run Docker commands with sudo.

Open a new terminal and test Docker access. In the terminal, run:

docker ps

If you see a permission denied error (something like permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket), add your user to the docker group so that you don't need to run the command with sudo.

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

Verify Docker setup and pull container

Pull the Open WebUI container image with integrated Ollama:

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

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.

NOTE

Application data will be stored in the open-webui volume and model data will be stored in the open-webui-ollama volume.

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 DGX Spark device 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.

You can try this set up with NVIDIA Sync so that you can monitor GPU and memory usage through the DGX Dashboard 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 and rollback

Steps to completely remove the Open WebUI installation and free up resources.

WARNING

These commands will permanently delete all Open WebUI data and downloaded models.

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

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