Going Headless: Running Without a Monitor

Why go headless

Once Ollama is running, there's no real reason to keep a monitor, keyboard, and mouse permanently attached to something that's really just serving models over your network now.

Going headless means the mini PC can live somewhere out of the way - a closet, a shelf, wherever it's quiet.

You manage it entirely from your everyday computer over SSH, a secure command-line connection.

Enabling SSH

On most Linux mini PC setups, SSH is either already running or one command away:

sudo systemctl enable --now ssh

On Mac, it's a checkbox: System Settings → General → Sharing → Remote Login. Turn it on.

Before you disconnect the monitor, find the machine's local IP address - you'll need it to connect:

hostname -I

Worth doing at the same time: give the machine an actual hostname instead of leaving it as the generic default. On Linux:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname ai-box

Not required, but it makes the machine easier to find on your network and easier to identify at a glance in your router's device list or in commands like ssh username@ai-box.local instead of remembering a numeric IP.

Connecting from another machine

From your everyday computer's terminal:

ssh username@192.168.1.XXX

Replace the username and IP with your mini PC's actual values. The first connection will ask you to confirm the machine's identity - type yes and continue.

From here, you can now safely unplug the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Everything - checking on Ollama, restarting Open WebUI's container if you've set one up, installing updates - happens through this SSH session instead.

Does closing SSH stop everything?

No - and this trips people up the first time. Ollama doesn't run inside your SSH session; it runs as a background service (a systemd service on Linux) that keeps going whether or not anyone is connected - and so does Open WebUI, if you've set it up, since it runs as its own Docker container. Closing your terminal, or even your laptop lid, just ends the remote session - it doesn't touch what's running on the mini PC itself.

You can confirm this yourself: disconnect, then reconnect and run ollama ps - or reload Open WebUI in a browser from another device, if you have it installed. Either way, it's still there, still responding, because nothing about it depended on your SSH connection staying open.

Verifying everything after a reboot

This is a different question from "does closing SSH stop things" above - a reboot actually restarts the OS, so the real thing to confirm is that Ollama and Open WebUI are both set to start automatically rather than needing you there to launch them by hand. SSH back in after a reboot (a power outage, an update that required a restart) and check:

systemctl status ollama
docker ps

The first should show active (running); the second should list open-webui if you've set it up. Both come up on their own because the install guides set them to - systemctl enable for Ollama, --restart always on the Open WebUI container - but it's worth actually confirming once rather than assuming, especially the first time this machine reboots unattended.

Switching to key-based login

Password login works, but an SSH key is both more convenient and more secure - no password to type, and nothing guessable for an automated scan to brute-force if this machine is ever reachable beyond your home network. From your everyday computer, not the mini PC:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
ssh-copy-id username@192.168.1.XXX

The first command generates a key pair if you don't already have one; the second copies your public key to the mini PC so it recognizes you automatically. After confirming you can connect without a password, you can optionally disable password login entirely on the mini PC by setting PasswordAuthentication no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restarting the SSH service - worth doing if you ever plan to reach this machine from outside your home network.

What actually goes wrong

Connection refused when you try to SSH in

This almost always means the SSH service isn't actually running yet, or a firewall is blocking it. Reconnect the monitor briefly and confirm the service status:

sudo systemctl status ssh

The IP address changed and you can't find the machine

Check your router's connected devices list - most home routers show a page of everything currently on the network, usually by device name. This is also the moment to set up that static IP reservation if you haven't already.

You want SSH access from outside your home network too

That's a real, common want - but it's a meaningfully bigger security decision than anything in this guide, since it means something is reachable from the internet, not just your home network. See Locking Down Your Local AI Setup before opening anything up that way.

Common questions