When ollama is stopped, propose to start it, instead of downloading it

[fbricon]

Validations

• I believe this is a way to improve. I'll try to join the Continue Discord for questions
• I'm not able to find an open issue that requests the same enhancement

Problem

When ollama is stopped, you get this error message:

which can be pretty confusing, since well, ollama is already downloaded/installed. We should have a way of starting it instead.

I have some (ASL2) code for checking ollama is installed and for starting it, that I can contribute. I need to do a bit of cleanup first.

Solution

• if ollama is defined as local (check apiUrl in config.json), then check the output of ollama -v to see if it's installed

• there are a few ways to start ollama, depending on the platform:

  • on Mac, run ollama list, will start ollama as a service
  • on Linux, run the ollama service if available, else fall back to running ollama serve
  • on Windows, AFAIK there's no way to run ollama as a service from CLI, so just do ollama serve

  So, if ollama is installed, then just replace the Download Ollama button with a Start Ollama one, hooked into the startup code.

[tomasz-stefaniak]

Until this issue is resolved, I updated the error message to be less ambiguous: #3331

[fbricon]

Current WiP: