Arch Linux User Repository

@almanac, Because of how open-webui is structured, and the docker-first approach upstream, it requires a fair bit of manual setup when starting the application, what with the environment variables and everything.

So basically, in order to un-dockerise and make it so that open-webui runs as applications are supposed to on Arch, and so that everyone doesn't need to fiddle with environment variables and such, we use a systemd service, so to start open-webui, you should run: sudo systemctl start open-webui.service

Starting the service above replaces the command "open-webui serve" to "start the Open WebUI server, which you can access at http://localhost:8080". Restart the service by using sudo systemctl restart open-webui.service or by stopping and starting the service, if the aforementioned URL shows "Unable to connect" while systemctl status open-webui.service shows the service as active. If neither of those resolve the "Unable to connect" issue, rebooting your system might help. (thanks to arsCynic for bringing up how people might be confused by the unclear instructions, so making them more clear.)

Secondly, the reason why you can't do a simple open-webui serve, and can't find open-webui in the PATH anywhere is due to the way this package is currently structured.

We're using a virtual environment to manage the Python dependencies required to run the application, because that was the way this was set up since before I was maintaining this PKGBUILD (open-webui-git is the original PKGBUILD, I just yoinked and un-git-ified it).

In my personal opinion, this is an ugly way, hence I tried to un-virtualenv it, but a few dependencies fail in the check() portion, so it was decided to keep the current approach to reduce user friction.

You can find the non-virtualenv package at open-webui-no-venv, which does work, apart from needing to comment out the check() portions of the PKGBUILD of the dependencies that are failing.

You can do a open-webui serve when using open-webui-no-venv, but the aforementioned environment variables still need to be set, so even then it's still recommended to use the systemd service, but it is technically possible to do it.

Hope this lengthy explanation helps.

Edit: I should probably pin this, so I'll do that.

Due to failing build dependencies, the rework has been reverted, as of 0.5.3-3. As suggested by @Davidyz, I've created a separate package, open-webui-no-venv, that uses the reworked PKGBUILD.

PSA everyone, I intend to rework major parts of the PKGBUILD and the way open-webui is installed on the system so that we can get rid of the virtualenv and the long time it takes to build on every install. Also, it should make it so that you don't need to do the things that I mentioned in the first pinned note.

I've tested the changes on my end, and you don't need to do anything when updating from the old way to the new way, it should work just fine as it is, but still, this is a major change. I'll be moving installing the python dependencies from inside a virtualenv to installing the python dependencies system-wide.

If there are any bugs after the rework, which will be updated as 0.5.3-2 pkgrel bump, which are related to open-webui itself, rather than it's dependencies, please add a comment, and I'll fix them, and if there are too many, or some are unfixable, I'll revert the rework.

Note to all existing users (those who will be upgrading the package, not installing it anew, people installing anew should be fine):

When major Python versions switch (as just happened with Python 3.12 -> 3.13), I believe it would be prudent to delete the virtual environment created by the backend, done so manually by doing a sudo rm -r /opt/open-webui/backend/venv, and then reinstalling the open-webui package, thus rebuilding the virtual environment with the new Python major version.

Just reinstalling the open-webui package without removing or uninstalling makes sure that your user data, that is used in openwebui, for e.g., your admin password, remains as it is.

As an addendum, this might be applicable when the python package itself is changed due to dependency mismatches (again, as just happened when I changed the dependency from python to python312, and would happen again once python 3.13 is supported upstream back to python from python312), I'm not so sure about this, so testing might be needed, but just to be safe, please do so as well.

This is so that any mismatches between the Python version that created the virtualenv and the Python version in use, and any problems that might arise from that, can be avoided.

I got a failed build with this PKGBUILD, adding npm install --force y-protocols to build() fixed it.

hi, Im experiencing this error, I have no idea what is it, also, can someone teach me how to write this correctly so it looks like code and not just yellow? npm error code ENOENT npm error syscall mkdir npm error path /.npm npm error errno ENOENT npm error enoent Invalid response body while trying to fetch https://registry.npmjs.org/@tiptap%2fcore: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir '/.npm' npm error enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file. npm error enoent npm notice npm notice New major version of npm available! 10.9.3 -> 11.6.0 npm notice Changelog: https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v11.6.0 npm notice To update run: npm install -g npm@11.6.0 npm notice npm error Log files were not written due to an error writing to the directory: /.npm/_logs npm error You can rerun the command with --loglevel=verbose to see the logs in your terminal ==> ERROR: Se produjo un fallo en build(). Cancelando... Finished with result: exit-code Main processes terminated with: code=exited, status=4/NOPERMISSION Service runtime: 5min 44.320s CPU time consumed: 47.575s Memory peak: 1.2G (swap: 0B)

It's due to the venv setting. You need /tmp to be at least 5GB because pip makes the venv by filling /tmp folder.

Last update make the package fail on startup due to missing packages in the venv;

"bash: /opt/open-webui/backend/venv/bin/python3: No module named uvicorn"

Hello,

Can you please make use of provides and conflicts with your open-webui-git package? It would help out a lot.

Thanks, super

@the_10, should be fixed as per the latest pkgrel 0.6.18-2

latest update fails for me with (when updating from 0.6.16-1 -> 0.6.18-1)

Could not resolve dependency:
peer @tiptap/core@"^2.7.0" from @tiptap/extension-bubble-menu@2.26.1
node_modules/@tiptap/extension-bubble-menu
  @tiptap/extension-bubble-menu@"^2.26.1" from the root project

Conflicting peer dependency: @tiptap/core@2.26.1
node_modules/@tiptap/core
  peer @tiptap/core@"^2.7.0" from @tiptap/extension-bubble-menu@2.26.1
  node_modules/@tiptap/extension-bubble-menu
    @tiptap/extension-bubble-menu@"^2.26.1" from the root project

@dongfengweixiao, unable to reproduce on my system, but it looks like a configuration error with nvm and npm config? I'm not sure how to help you, this isn't a bug with the package itself.

build fail:

v20.19.4 is already installed. nvm is not compatible with the "npm_config_prefix" environment variable: currently set to "/home/XXX/.local" Run unset npm_config_prefix to unset it. Creating default alias: default -> lts/iron (-> v20.19.4)

@30p87, thanks a lot for catching that, I hadn't realised it. Should be fixed by the pkgrel bump 0.6.13-2. I have no idea how that slipped through the cracks, when fiddling with open_webui.install, I must have forgotten to change the paths.