Install

#Requirements

• Linux on x86_64 or ARM64 (ARMv8-A: Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, ARM servers).
• glibc 2.28 or newer: Debian 10, Ubuntu 18.10, Fedora, RHEL 8, Arch, openSUSE and later. Alpine and other musl systems are not supported.
• About 1.1 GB of disk and 1.3 GB of free memory while answering.
• Nothing else: no Python, no compiler, no GPU. After installing, no network.

#Platforms

#Install or upgrade

curl -fsSLO https://github.com/arxhr007/lxask/releases/latest/download/install.sh
sh install.sh

(wget https://github.com/arxhr007/lxask/releases/latest/download/install.sh works too.) To check the script before running it, against the release's checksums:

curl -fsSLO https://github.com/arxhr007/lxask/releases/latest/download/SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS      # install.sh: OK

The script:

1. picks the build for your CPU: lxask-x86_64-v3 (AVX2, nearly every x86 PC since 2015), lxask-x86_64 (older x86) or lxask-aarch64;
2. downloads it with the model, its adapter, the encoder and the documentation index, using curl, wget or a logged-in gh;
3. checks every file against SHA256SUMS;
4. puts lxask in ~/.local/bin and the rest in ~/.local/share/lxask;
5. asks whether to keep lxask loaded between questions, for answers in about 2 s instead of 7 (recommended, the default; without a terminal to ask in, yes);
6. asks one question to prove it runs.

It needs no root and writes nothing else: no system files, no shell startup files, no services. Upgrading from linu also moves ~/.local/share/linu (below).

If ~/.local/bin is not on your PATH, it says how to add it.

Running it again upgrades. The previous program is kept as ~/.local/share/lxask/lxask.previous and the previous model as model.gguf.previous.

Options: --tag v0.11.0 installs a given release, --serve / --no-serve answer the question above, --no-test skips the test question, and LXASK_HOME or LXASK_BIN install somewhere else.

#Without a network

On a machine with a network, download every file of a release from its GitHub page into one directory. Copy that directory to the other machine and run:

sh install.sh --from DIR

#Check it

lxask --version
lxask "show disk usage of each folder here"

The first answer takes a few seconds while the model loads. To keep it loaded, see the server.

#Go back to the previous version

mv ~/.local/share/lxask/lxask.previous ~/.local/bin/lxask
ln -sfn "$(readlink -f ~/.local/share/lxask/model.gguf.previous)" ~/.local/share/lxask/model.gguf

Or run an older release's own installer, from its page on GitHub (--tag works only between releases from 0.9 on: before that the program was called linu and its files are named so).

#Upgrading from linu (0.8 and earlier)

lxask was called linu up to version 0.8. Installing 0.9 or later over it moves ~/.local/share/linu to ~/.local/share/lxask, keeps one copy of the model (the same model, under its new name), and leaves linu working as a link to lxask. The old LINU_* environment variables are still read; the LXASK_* names come first.

#Uninstall

lxask --stop                      # if a server is running
rm ~/.local/bin/lxask
rm -r ~/.local/share/lxask        # the model, the index, your feedback reports

#Problems

• "this CPU lacks SSE4.2" or "glibc ... is too old": the machine is older than lxask supports.
• "this system uses musl libc": Alpine. Use a Debian or Ubuntu container instead.
• "checksum mismatch": the download was damaged. Run the installer again.
• Slow answers: about 7 seconds on a recent laptop is normal. lxask --serve brings it to about 2. On a small ARM board, expect several times that.
• Out of memory: lxask needs about 1.3 GB free. Close other programs, or stop a lxask --serve you no longer need with lxask --stop.