Local Ollama is not working with the Plugin

Product Support

AI-generated summary

A user named Tikkel is experiencing issues with the Ollama plugin in Discourse, encountering an “Internal Server Error” when trying to use it, despite successfully testing the Ollama service inside the container. Falco suggests checking the logs and ensuring the Ollama instance is reachable by Discourse. Tikkel shares the logs, showing a successful API call but an error when testing through the WebUI. After further troubleshooting, Tikkel discovers that the issue was due to incorrect syntax in the environment variable DISCOURSE_ALLOWED_INTERNAL_HOSTS, which required pipes (|) instead of commas to separate values. The correct syntax is DISCOURSE_ALLOWED_INTERNAL_HOSTS: “localhost|127.0.0.1|172.17.0.1”.

1

In the container, i can use the ollama-service. But in the Discourse-Plugin comes only a “Internal Server Error”.

curl http://172.17.0.1:11434/v1/chat/completions   -H “Content-Type: application/json”   -d ‘{
“model”: “llama3.1:8b”,
“messages”: \[{“role”: “user”, “content”: “Hallo”}\]
}’
{“id”:“chatcmpl-145”,“object”:“chat.completion”,“created”:1760470827,“model”:“llama3.1:8b”,“system_fingerprint”:“fp_ollama”,“choices”:\[{“index”:0,“message”:{“role”:“assistant”,“content”:“Halló! (That’s the Icelandic pronunciation, by the way) or more commonly: Hallo! How can I help you today?”},“finish_reason”:“stop”}\],“usage”:{“prompt_tokens”:11,“completion_tokens”:29,“total_tokens”:40}}

Name: Ollama Llama 3.1 8B
Modell-ID: llama3.1:8b
Anbieter: OpenAI
URL: http://172.17.0.1:11434/v1/chat/completions
Tokenizer: Llama3
Kontextfenster: 32000

2

Can you go to the page at /logs on your instance and share the error info here please?

Did you run the cURL test from inside the Discourse container or from the outside? It may be a networking issue where you need to make the ollama instance reachable by Discourse.

3

The test was from inside the Discourse container.

If i test it from the WebUI - i become a “Internal Server Error“.

Here is the log at this moment:
tail -f /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/rails/production.log

Started GET “/chat/api/me/channels” for 10.233.21.85 at 2025-10-15 04:33:58 +0000
Processing by Chat::Api::CurrentUserChannelsController#index as JSON
Completed 200 OK in 131ms (Views: 0.1ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms (0 queries, 0 cached) | GC: 75.4ms)
Started GET “/admin/plugins/discourse-ai/ai-llms/test.json?ai_llm%5Bmax_prompt_tokens%5D=32000&ai_llm%5Bmax_output_tokens%5D=&ai_llm%5Bapi_key%5D=[FILTERED]&ai_llm%5Btokenizer%5D=DiscourseAi%3A%3ATokenizer%3A%3ALlama3Tokenizer&ai_llm%5Burl%5D=http%3A%2F%2F172.17.0.1%3A11434%2Fv1%2Fchat%2Fcompletions&ai_llm%5Bdisplay_name%5D=Ollama%20Llama%203.1%208B&ai_llm%5Bname%5D=llama3.1%3A8b&ai_llm%5Bprovider%5D=open_ai&ai_llm%5Benabled_chat_bot%5D=false&ai_llm%5Bvision_enabled%5D=false&ai_llm%5Binput_cost%5D=&ai_llm%5Boutput_cost%5D=&ai_llm%5Bcached_input_cost%5D=&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Borganization%5D=&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Bdisable_native_tools%5D=true&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Bdisable_temperature%5D=true&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Bdisable_top_p%5D=true&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Bdisable_streaming%5D=true&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Benable_responses_api%5D=true&ai_llm%5Bprovider_params%5D%5Breasoning_effort%5D=default” for 10.233.21.85 at 2025-10-15 04:34:01 +0000
Processing by DiscourseAi::Admin::AiLlmsController#test as JSON
Parameters: {“ai_llm”=>{“max_prompt_tokens”=>“32000”, “max_output_tokens”=>“”, “api_key”=>“[FILTERED]”, “tokenizer”=>“DiscourseAi::Tokenizer::Llama3Tokenizer”, “url”=>“``http://172.17.0.1:11434/v1/chat/completions”``, “display_name”=>“Ollama Llama 3.1 8B”, “name”=>“llama3.1:8b”, “provider”=>“open_ai”, “enabled_chat_bot”=>“false”, “vision_enabled”=>“false”, “input_cost”=>“”, “output_cost”=>“”, “cached_input_cost”=>“”, “provider_params”=>{“organization”=>“”, “disable_native_tools”=>“true”, “disable_temperature”=>“true”, “disable_top_p”=>“true”, “disable_streaming”=>“true”, “enable_responses_api”=>“true”, “reasoning_effort”=>“default”}}}
Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 45ms (ActiveRecord: 0.0ms (0 queries, 0 cached) | GC: 39.0ms)

app.yml

templates:
  - "templates/postgres.template.yml"
  - "templates/redis.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.ssl.custom.template.yml"

expose:
  - "127.0.0.1:8080:80"
  - "0.0.0.0:8443:443"

params:
  db_default_text_search_config: "pg_catalog.english"
  db_shared_buffers: "4096MB"

env:
  DISCOURSE_ALLOWED_INTERNAL_HOSTS: "localhost,127.0.0.1,172.17.0.1"
  http_proxy: "http://proxy.de:8080"
  https_proxy: "http://proxy.de:8080"
  no_proxy: "localhost,127.0.0.1,172.17.0.0/16,.firma.de"
  ENABLE_SSL: true
  DISCOURSE_BASE_URL: "https://forum.firma.de:8443"
  DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME: forum.firma.de
  DISCOURSE_PORT: 8443
  DISCOURSE_CDN_URL: "https://forum.firma.de:8443"
  DISCOURSE_FORCE_HTTPS: true
  LC_ALL: en_US.UTF-8
  LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  LANGUAGE: en_US.UTF-8
  UNICORN_WORKERS: 8
  DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: 'm.k@firma.de'
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: 10.176.97.14
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 25
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: ""
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD: ""
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_ENABLE_START_TLS: false
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_DOMAIN: forum.firma.de
  DISCOURSE_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL: noreply@forum.firma.de
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_OPENSSL_VERIFY_MODE: none

volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log

hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git

run:
  - exec: echo "Beginning of custom commands"
  - exec: |
      cd /var/www/discourse
      su discourse -c 'bundle exec rails runner "
        SiteSetting.force_https = true
        SiteSetting.port = 8443
        Rails.cache.clear
      "'
  - exec: echo "End of custom commands"
4

Ah, I got it! The environment variable requires a special syntax in the enumeration—pipes instead of commas.

DISCOURSE_ALLOWED_INTERNAL_HOSTS: “localhost|127.0.0.1|172.17.0.1”