solar-host 0.1.4

Process manager for model inference backends (llama.cpp, HuggingFace)

Solar Host

A multi-backend process manager for model inference servers with REST API and WebSocket log streaming.

Features

• Multi-Backend Support:
  • llama.cpp (llama-server) for GGUF models
  • HuggingFace AutoModelForCausalLM for text generation
  • HuggingFace AutoModelForSequenceClassification for classification
  • HuggingFace AutoModel for embeddings (last hidden state with mean pooling)
• Socket.IO control client - Connects to solar-control’s /hosts namespace for registration, heartbeat, and instance lifecycle (start/stop/restart, config updates). Supports pending-host and rejection events with post-approval sync.
• Robust instance lifecycle - Non-blocking process wait, state re-check after startup to avoid start/stop races, and full cleanup of log/state buffers on stop or delete.
• Auto-assign ports starting from 3500
• Persistent configuration with auto-restart on boot
• Real-time log streaming via WebSocket
• REST API for instance management
• API key authentication

Installation

# Basic install (llama.cpp backend only)
pip install solar-host

# With HuggingFace backend support
pip install solar-host[huggingface]

# With NVIDIA GPU monitoring
pip install solar-host[nvidia]

# Everything
pip install solar-host[all]

# Development (editable install with test dependencies)
pip install -e ".[all,dev]"

Backend-Specific Requirements

For llama.cpp backend:

• Install llama-server and ensure it's in your PATH

For HuggingFace backends:

• Install with the huggingface extra: pip install solar-host[huggingface]

Setup

1. Create .env file

Create a .env file in the solar-host/ directory:

API_KEY=your-secret-key-here
HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=8001
MODELS_DIR=./models

# Solar-control connection (for Socket.IO registration and lifecycle)
SOLAR_CONTROL_URL=http://localhost:8000
SOLAR_CONTROL_API_KEY=your-solar-control-management-api-key

• API_KEY - Used by solar-control (and other callers) to access this host’s REST API.
• MODELS_DIR - Path to the models directory. Used for disk space reporting in the /health endpoint. Defaults to ./models.
• SOLAR_CONTROL_URL - Base URL of solar-control (HTTP; Socket.IO connects to the same origin).
• SOLAR_CONTROL_API_KEY - Management API key from solar-control. The host uses it to connect to the /hosts namespace; it must be approved via the management API or WebUI before it appears in the gateway pool.

2. Start the server

# Start the server (reads HOST and PORT from .env)
solar-host

# Or with uvicorn directly (e.g. for --reload during development)
uvicorn solar_host.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8001 --reload

The server will:

• Create config.json automatically (if it doesn't exist)
• Create logs/ directory for instance logs
• Auto-restart any instances that were running before shutdown

3. Verify it's running

curl http://localhost:8001/health
# Should return: {"status":"healthy","service":"solar-host","version":"2.0.0","disk":{"total_gb":500,"used_gb":120,"available_gb":380}}

4. Access Swagger UI

Open your browser to: http://localhost:8001/docs

1. Click the "Authorize" button
2. Enter your API key from .env file
3. Click "Authorize" and then "Close"
4. Now you can use the interactive API documentation!

Backend Types

Solar Host supports four backend types:

Backend Type	Model Type	Endpoints Supported
llamacpp	GGUF models via llama-server	/v1/chat/completions, /v1/completions
huggingface_causal	HuggingFace AutoModelForCausalLM	/v1/chat/completions, /v1/completions
huggingface_classification	HuggingFace AutoModelForSequenceClassification	/v1/classify
huggingface_embedding	HuggingFace AutoModel (last hidden state)	/v1/embeddings

Managing Instances

Creating a llama.cpp Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "config": {
      "backend_type": "llamacpp",
      "model": "/path/to/model.gguf",
      "alias": "llama-3:8b",
      "threads": 4,
      "n_gpu_layers": 999,
      "temp": 0.7,
      "top_p": 0.9,
      "top_k": 40,
      "min_p": 0.05,
      "ctx_size": 8192,
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "api_key": "instance-key"
    }
  }'

Creating a HuggingFace Causal LM Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "config": {
      "backend_type": "huggingface_causal",
      "model_id": "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-chat-hf",
      "alias": "llama2-hf:7b",
      "device": "auto",
      "dtype": "auto",
      "max_length": 4096,
      "trust_remote_code": false,
      "use_flash_attention": true,
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "api_key": "instance-key"
    }
  }'

Creating a HuggingFace Classification Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "config": {
      "backend_type": "huggingface_classification",
      "model_id": "distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sst-2-english",
      "alias": "sentiment:distilbert",
      "device": "auto",
      "dtype": "auto",
      "max_length": 512,
      "labels": ["negative", "positive"],
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "api_key": "instance-key"
    }
  }'

Creating a HuggingFace Embedding Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "config": {
      "backend_type": "huggingface_embedding",
      "model_id": "sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2",
      "alias": "embed:minilm",
      "device": "auto",
      "dtype": "auto",
      "max_length": 512,
      "normalize_embeddings": true,
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "api_key": "instance-key"
    }
  }'

Starting an Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances/{instance-id}/start \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here"

Viewing All Instances

curl http://localhost:8001/instances \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here"

Stopping an Instance

curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/instances/{instance-id}/stop \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-secret-key-here"

API Endpoints

Instance Management

• POST /instances - Create new instance
• GET /instances - List all instances
• GET /instances/{id} - Get instance details
• PUT /instances/{id} - Update instance config
• DELETE /instances/{id} - Remove instance
• POST /instances/{id}/start - Start instance
• POST /instances/{id}/stop - Stop instance
• POST /instances/{id}/restart - Restart instance
• GET /instances/{id}/state - Get runtime state
• GET /instances/{id}/last-generation - Get last generation metrics

WebSocket

• WS /instances/{id}/logs - Stream logs with sequence numbers
• WS /instances/{id}/state - Stream runtime state updates

System

• GET /health - Health check
• GET /memory - GPU/RAM memory usage

Authentication

All requests require an X-API-Key header with your configured API key from the .env file.

Configuration Reference

llama.cpp Config Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
backend_type	No	"llamacpp"	Backend type identifier
model	Yes	-	Full path to the GGUF model file
alias	Yes	-	Model alias (e.g., "llama-3:8b") used for routing
threads	No	1	Number of CPU threads to use
n_gpu_layers	No	999	Number of layers to offload to GPU (999 = all)
temp	No	1.0	Sampling temperature (0.0-2.0)
top_p	No	1.0	Top-p sampling (0.0-1.0)
top_k	No	0	Top-k sampling (0 = disabled)
min_p	No	0.0	Min-p sampling (0.0-1.0)
ctx_size	No	131072	Context window size
chat_template_file	No	-	Path to Jinja chat template file
special	No	false	Enable llama-server --special flag
ot	No	-	Override tensor string (passed as -ot flag to llama-server)
model_type	No	"llm"	Model type: "llm", "embedding", or "reranker"
pooling	No	-	Pooling strategy for embedding models: "none", "mean", "cls", "last", "rank" (only valid when model_type is "embedding")
host	No	"0.0.0.0"	Host to bind to
port	No	auto	Port (auto-assigned if not specified)
api_key	Yes	-	API key for this instance

HuggingFace Causal LM Config Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
backend_type	Yes	-	Must be "huggingface_causal"
model_id	Yes	-	HuggingFace model ID or local path
alias	Yes	-	Model alias for routing
device	No	"auto"	Device: auto, cuda, mps, cpu
dtype	No	"auto"	Data type: auto, float16, bfloat16, float32
max_length	No	4096	Maximum sequence length
trust_remote_code	No	false	Trust remote code from HuggingFace
use_flash_attention	No	true	Use Flash Attention 2 if available
host	No	"0.0.0.0"	Host to bind to
port	No	auto	Port (auto-assigned if not specified)
api_key	Yes	-	API key for this instance

HuggingFace Classification Config Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
backend_type	Yes	-	Must be "huggingface_classification"
model_id	Yes	-	HuggingFace model ID or local path
alias	Yes	-	Model alias for routing
device	No	"auto"	Device: auto, cuda, mps, cpu
dtype	No	"auto"	Data type: auto, float16, bfloat16, float32
max_length	No	512	Maximum sequence length
labels	No	auto	Label names (auto-detected from model if not provided)
trust_remote_code	No	false	Trust remote code from HuggingFace
host	No	"0.0.0.0"	Host to bind to
port	No	auto	Port (auto-assigned if not specified)
api_key	Yes	-	API key for this instance

HuggingFace Embedding Config Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
backend_type	Yes	-	Must be "huggingface_embedding"
model_id	Yes	-	HuggingFace model ID or local path
alias	Yes	-	Model alias for routing
device	No	"auto"	Device: auto, cuda, mps, cpu
dtype	No	"auto"	Data type: auto, float16, bfloat16, float32
max_length	No	512	Maximum sequence length
normalize_embeddings	No	true	L2 normalize output embedding vectors
trust_remote_code	No	false	Trust remote code from HuggingFace
host	No	"0.0.0.0"	Host to bind to
port	No	auto	Port (auto-assigned if not specified)
api_key	Yes	-	API key for this instance

Device Options

Device	Description
auto	Automatically select best available (CUDA > MPS > CPU)
cuda	NVIDIA GPU (requires CUDA)
mps	Apple Silicon GPU (macOS)
cpu	CPU only

Example Configurations

llama.cpp - Small Model

{
  "backend_type": "llamacpp",
  "model": "/models/llama-3-7b.gguf",
  "alias": "llama-3:7b",
  "threads": 4,
  "n_gpu_layers": 999,
  "temp": 0.7,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "ctx_size": 8192,
  "api_key": "llama3-7b-key"
}

llama.cpp - Large Model with Custom Template

{
  "backend_type": "llamacpp",
  "model": "/models/gpt-oss-120b-F16.gguf",
  "alias": "gpt-oss:120b",
  "threads": 1,
  "n_gpu_layers": 999,
  "ctx_size": 131072,
  "chat_template_file": "/models/templates/harmony.jinja",
  "api_key": "gpt-oss-key"
}

HuggingFace - Text Generation

{
  "backend_type": "huggingface_causal",
  "model_id": "microsoft/phi-2",
  "alias": "phi-2:2.7b",
  "device": "cuda",
  "dtype": "float16",
  "max_length": 2048,
  "api_key": "phi2-key"
}

HuggingFace - Sentiment Classification

{
  "backend_type": "huggingface_classification",
  "model_id": "cardiffnlp/twitter-roberta-base-sentiment-latest",
  "alias": "sentiment:roberta",
  "device": "cuda",
  "max_length": 512,
  "labels": ["negative", "neutral", "positive"],
  "api_key": "sentiment-key"
}

HuggingFace - Embedding Model

{
  "backend_type": "huggingface_embedding",
  "model_id": "sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2",
  "alias": "embed:minilm",
  "device": "cuda",
  "max_length": 512,
  "normalize_embeddings": true,
  "api_key": "embed-key"
}

File Structure

solar-host/
├── .env                    # Configuration (not in git)
├── config.json             # Auto-generated instance storage (not in git)
├── logs/                   # Auto-generated log directory (not in git)
├── pyproject.toml          # Package metadata and dependencies
├── solar_host/
│   ├── backends/           # Backend runners
│   │   ├── base.py         # Abstract BackendRunner
│   │   ├── llamacpp.py     # llama.cpp runner
│   │   └── huggingface.py  # HuggingFace runner
│   ├── models/             # Pydantic models
│   │   ├── base.py         # Base models
│   │   ├── llamacpp.py     # llama.cpp config
│   │   └── huggingface.py  # HuggingFace configs
│   ├── servers/            # Standalone server processes
│   │   └── hf_server.py    # HuggingFace model server
│   ├── routes/             # API routes
│   ├── config.py           # Configuration management
│   ├── main.py             # FastAPI application
│   ├── models_manager.py   # Managed models directory and manifest
│   └── process_manager.py  # Process lifecycle management
├── tests/
└── README.md

Troubleshooting

Solar-host won't start

Error: "Address already in use"

• Another service is using port 8001
• Solution: Change PORT in .env or stop the other service

Error: "No module named 'solar_host'"

• The package is not installed
• Solution: pip install solar-host or pip install -e . for development

llama.cpp Instance fails to start

1. Verify llama-server is installed:

   which llama-server
   

2. Check model path:

   ls -lh /path/to/your/model.gguf
   

3. Check instance logs in logs/ directory

HuggingFace Instance fails to start

1. Verify dependencies:

   python -c "import torch; import transformers; print('OK')"
   

2. Check CUDA availability (if using GPU):

   python -c "import torch; print(f'CUDA: {torch.cuda.is_available()}')"
   

3. Check MPS availability (macOS):

   python -c "import torch; print(f'MPS: {torch.backends.mps.is_available()}')"
   

4. Check instance logs in logs/ directory

Instance keeps retrying and failing

• Solar-host will retry starting an instance up to 2 times
• Check the error_message field:

  curl http://localhost:8001/instances/{instance-id} \
    -H "X-API-Key: your-key" | jq '.error_message'
  

Conda Environment

When running solar-host from a conda environment, HuggingFace server subprocesses automatically inherit the same environment. Just ensure all dependencies are installed in your conda environment:

conda activate your-env
pip install torch transformers accelerate

Integration with Solar Control

Solar-host connects to solar-control over Socket.IO (namespace /hosts). Set SOLAR_CONTROL_URL and SOLAR_CONTROL_API_KEY in .env. On startup the host registers and appears in solar-control’s pending list until approved.

Approve the host (via solar-control management API or WebUI):

# List pending hosts
curl http://your-control-server:8000/api/hosts/pending \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-management-api-key"

# Approve (use pending_id from the list)
curl -X POST http://your-control-server:8000/api/hosts/pending/{pending_id}/approve \
  -H "X-API-Key: your-management-api-key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "GPU Server 1",
    "url": "http://192.168.1.100:8001",
    "api_key": "your-solar-host-api-key"
  }'

Alternatively, create a host directly (no pending step) with POST /api/hosts and the same JSON body.

Once approved, instances are accessible through solar-control’s OpenAI-compatible gateway:

• /v1/chat/completions - Chat completion (llamacpp, huggingface_causal)
• /v1/completions - Text completion (llamacpp, huggingface_causal)
• /v1/classify - Classification (huggingface_classification)
• /v1/embeddings - Embeddings (huggingface_embedding)

Backward Compatibility

Existing configurations without backend_type are automatically treated as llamacpp instances. No migration required.