Friday, September 5, 2025

ValueError: Some modules are dispatched on the CPU or the disk. Make sure you have enough GPU RAM to fit the quantized model. If you want to dispatch the model on the CPU or the disk while keeping these modules in 32-bit, you need to set llm_int8_enable_fp32_cpu_offload=True and pass a custom device_map to from_pretrained. Check https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/main/en/main_classes/quantization#offload-between-cpu-and-gpu for more details.

 

hat error usually pops up when you try to load a quantized model (like 4-bit QLoRA) with Hugging Face’s transformers and bitsandbytes, but your GPU doesn’t have enough VRAM to hold all the model layers. By default, Hugging Face tries to put everything on the GPU, and when it can’t, it errors out.


🔹 Why the Error Happens

  • The model is too large for your GPU (e.g., a 13B model on 8GB VRAM).

  • Some layers got “dispatched” (offloaded) onto CPU or disk.

  • You didn’t explicitly allow CPU offloading, so transformers raised a ValueError.


🔹 Solutions

✅ Option 1: Enable CPU Offload (Recommended if low VRAM)

You can allow the model to split between GPU + CPU:

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, BitsAndBytesConfig model_id = "mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2" bnb_config = BitsAndBytesConfig( load_in_4bit=True, bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True, bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4", bnb_4bit_compute_dtype="bfloat16" ) tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id) model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained( model_id, quantization_config=bnb_config, device_map="auto", # automatically spread across GPU + CPU llm_int8_enable_fp32_cpu_offload=True # ✅ allows CPU fallback in FP32 )

✅ Option 2: Force Specific Device Map

If you want more control, specify which parts go where:

device_map = { "transformer.wte": "cuda:0", # embeddings on GPU "transformer.h": "cpu", # some layers on CPU "lm_head": "cuda:0" } model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained( model_id, quantization_config=bnb_config, device_map=device_map, llm_int8_enable_fp32_cpu_offload=True )

✅ Option 3: Use a Smaller Model

If you only have ~8–12 GB VRAM, try:

  • Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.1 instead of v0.2

  • Or even smaller models (LLaMA-2-7B, Gemma-2B, etc.).


✅ Option 4: Use accelerate for Better Device Placement

pip install accelerate

Then run:

from accelerate import init_empty_weights, load_checkpoint_and_dispatch model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained( model_id, quantization_config=bnb_config, device_map="auto" )

This lets accelerate decide where to put layers across GPU/CPU/Disk.


🔹 Key Takeaway

  • If GPU VRAM < model size → must offload to CPU/disk.

  • Add llm_int8_enable_fp32_cpu_offload=True and/or device_map="auto".

  • Or use a smaller model to fit fully in GPU.

LoRA vs QLoRA

 

🔹 1. LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation)

LoRA is a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method for large language models (LLMs).

🧠 The Core Idea

  • Instead of updating all parameters of a huge LLM (billions of weights), LoRA inserts small trainable matrices (low-rank adapters) into certain layers (usually attention and/or feed-forward layers).

  • During fine-tuning:

    • Base model weights stay frozen (unchanged).

    • Only the small adapter weights are trained.

This massively reduces:

  • Memory usage 💾

  • Compute cost

  • Training time ⏱️


🔹 LoRA Example

If a weight matrix is W (say 4096 × 4096), instead of fine-tuning all ~16M parameters, LoRA trains two small matrices:

  • A (4096 × r) and B (r × 4096), where r is the rank (say 8 or 16).

  • The effective update is:

    W' = W + A × B

So you only train a few thousand parameters instead of millions.


🔹 2. QLoRA (Quantized LoRA)

QLoRA takes LoRA one step further by adding quantization.

🧠 The Core Idea

  • Quantization = Compress model weights into fewer bits (e.g., 16-bit → 4-bit).
    This saves GPU memory and makes training possible on smaller hardware.

  • QLoRA fine-tunes the quantized model with LoRA adapters on top.

So:

  1. Base model → 4-bit quantized (efficient storage + inference).

  2. Train only LoRA adapters (small rank matrices).

  3. Combine for final fine-tuned model.


🔹 Why QLoRA is Powerful

  • You can fine-tune 13B+ parameter models on a single consumer GPU (24GB VRAM).

  • Example: Guanaco, Alpaca, Vicuna fine-tunes often use QLoRA.

  • Enables democratization → people without supercomputers can fine-tune LLMs.


🔹 LoRA vs QLoRA (Quick Comparison)

FeatureLoRAQLoRA
Base ModelFull precision (16-bit/32-bit)Quantized (4-bit/8-bit)
Memory UsageMedium (needs decent GPU)Very low (fits big models on consumer GPUs)
TrainingAdapter training onlyAdapter training only (on quantized model)
SpeedFastEven faster (smaller memory)
Trade-offSlightly more accurateSmall accuracy drop due to quantization

🔹 Visual Analogy

  • LoRA = Adding small “adjustment knobs” to a giant machine, instead of rebuilding the whole machine.

  • QLoRA = Compressing the giant machine first, then adding the small adjustment knobs.


In practice:

  • Use LoRA if you have strong GPU resources.

  • Use QLoRA if you want to fine-tune big models (7B–65B) on consumer GPUs (like RTX 3090, 4090, A100 40GB).

OSError: You are trying to access a gated repo. Make sure to have access to it at https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2.

 That error means you’re trying to pull the Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 model from Hugging Face using Ollama (or Python/HF libraries), but Hugging Face has put that model behind a gated repository.

Here’s what’s happening and how to fix it:


🔹 Why You See This Error

  • “Gated repo” = The model is not public. You need to accept the license terms before downloading.

  • Hugging Face requires you to log in and manually request access for some models (Meta’s LLaMA, Mistral, etc.).

  • Without accepting, the API (or Ollama) gets blocked → hence the OSError.


🔹 Fixing It Step by Step

1. Accept Model License on Hugging Face

  1. Go to the model page:
    👉 Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2

  2. Click “Agree and access” (you may need a Hugging Face account and to be logged in).

  3. Once accepted, the repo becomes available to you.


2. Authenticate Locally

If you’re using Python/Hugging Face Transformers:

huggingface-cli login

Paste your HF access token (get it from Hugging Face settings).

If you’re using Ollama with Hugging Face models, you may need to:

  • Download the model manually from Hugging Face.

  • Or use a model already available in the Ollama library (ollama pull mistral).


3. Using Ollama Instead of Hugging Face Directly

Ollama already provides Mistral models without Hugging Face gating.
Just run:

ollama pull mistral ollama run mistral

This way, you bypass Hugging Face restrictions and still run the model locally.


Summary:
You got the error because you didn’t accept Hugging Face’s license. Either (a) accept & authenticate with HF, or (b) pull the model directly via Ollama (ollama pull mistral), which is usually the simpler option.

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