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Choose how much space models use

pasture keeps your models within two limits. You can set either one, or both:

  • The budget is the most space your models may take, such as 100 GB. There is no budget unless you set one.
  • The reserve is the free space to keep on your disk for everything else, such as 50 GB. Unless you set it, it is 10% of your disk, up to 20 GB.

When either limit is crossed, pasture moves away the model you used least recently, and checks again. It checks once a minute, and before each download.

Set a budget

pasture budget 100G

Choose an amount that leaves room for your own files. pasture budget off removes the budget.

Sizes count the way macOS counts disk space: 100G is 100 billion bytes, and 500M is 500 million.

Set the reserve

pasture reserve 20G

pasture reserve default goes back to 10% of the disk, up to 20 GB.

When a new budget or reserve would move more than three models away, pasture lists them and asks before it saves the change.

When the disk is nearly full

When your disk has less free space than the reserve, pasture cannot download a model, and the download stops with a message like this one:

Error: 507 Insufficient Storage: no room for tinyllama:latest (637.7 MB): the disk has 20.3 GB free and pasture keeps 20.0 GB free, and it would not fit even if every model that is not pinned, in memory, in use, or unable to come back moved away. To make room, lower the reserve to 19.7 GB or less with pasture reserve, free up disk space, or remove models you no longer need with pasture remove.

Here the disk has 20.3 GB free, and pasture keeps 20.0 GB free, so the model's 637.7 MB does not fit. The last sentence says what to change. To download the model, do one of these:

  • Lower the reserve, such as with pasture reserve 10G.
  • Free up space on the disk, such as by emptying the Trash.
  • Remove models you no longer need, with pasture remove.
  • Unpin a model, so that pasture can move it away.

The same message appears when a model would not fit in your budget. Raise the budget with pasture budget, or remove models.

See how much space models use

pasture status

The lines under the table say how the limits stand:

Models use 54.8 GB of the 100.0 GB budget.
The disk has 301.3 GB free, and pasture keeps 50.0 GB free.