MemPalace/mempalace · error · LLMError

Cannot reach {url}: {e}

Error message

Cannot reach {url}: {e}

What it means

LLMError raised when urlopen fails at the transport layer (urllib.error.URLError or OSError) before any HTTP response exists. This covers DNS failure, connection refused, timeouts, and reset connections — the message embeds the underlying exception text.

Source

Thrown at mempalace/llm_client.py:197

def _http_post_json(url: str, body: dict, headers: dict, timeout: int) -> dict:
    """POST JSON and return the parsed response. Raises LLMError on any failure."""
    req = Request(
        url,
        data=json.dumps(body).encode("utf-8"),
        headers={"Content-Type": "application/json", **headers},
    )
    try:
        with urlopen(req, timeout=timeout) as resp:
            return json.loads(resp.read())
    except HTTPError as e:
        detail = ""
        try:
            detail = e.read().decode("utf-8", errors="replace")[:500]
        except Exception:
            pass
        raise LLMError(f"HTTP {e.code} from {url}: {detail or e.reason}") from e
    except (URLError, OSError) as e:
        raise LLMError(f"Cannot reach {url}: {e}") from e
    except json.JSONDecodeError as e:
        raise LLMError(f"Malformed response from {url}: {e}") from e


# ==================== OLLAMA ====================


class OllamaProvider(LLMProvider):
    name = "ollama"
    DEFAULT_ENDPOINT = "http://localhost:11434"

    def __init__(
        self,
        model: str,
        endpoint: Optional[str] = None,
        timeout: int = 180,
        num_ctx: Optional[int] = None,
        **_: object,

View on GitHub (pinned to 06cb6987f0)

Solutions

1. Confirm the service is up: curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags (or your provider's health URL)
2. Start the local runtime (ollama serve, LM Studio server, vLLM) and retry
3. Verify --llm-endpoint host/port and that the host is reachable from where the code runs
4. Increase the timeout if large prompts are cutting it close

Example fix

# before
provider = build_provider("ollama", model="qwen3:8b")
resp = provider.classify(s, u)  # LLMError: Cannot reach http://localhost:11434: <urlopen error [Errno 111] Connection refused>

# after
import subprocess
subprocess.run(["ollama", "serve"])  # or ensure service is running
provider = build_provider("ollama", model="qwen3:8b")
resp = provider.classify(s, u)

import socket
from urllib.parse import urlparse

def endpoint_reachable(url, timeout=2):
    u = urlparse(url)
    host, port = u.hostname, u.port or (443 if u.scheme == "https" else 80)
    try:
        with socket.create_connection((host, port), timeout=timeout):
            return True
    except OSError:
        return False

assert endpoint_reachable(provider.endpoint)

from mempalace.llm_client import LLMError

try:
    resp = provider.classify(system, user)
except LLMError as e:
    if str(e).startswith("Cannot reach"):
        # service down: start it or queue work for later
        ...
    raise

When it happens

Trigger: Ollama not running (connection refused on localhost:11434); wrong hostname/port in --llm-endpoint; DNS failure for api.anthropic.com; request exceeded the configured timeout; firewall blocking the connection.

Common situations: Forgot to start Ollama/LM Studio/vLLM before running the pipeline; service listening only on 127.0.0.1 while the client runs in a container; proxy or corporate firewall blocking localhost-adjacent or external traffic; long classification requests exceeding the default 120s timeout.

Related errors

• Qdrant request failed: {exc.reason}
• HTTP {e.code} from {url}: {detail or e.reason}
• Malformed response from {url}: {e}
• Qdrant returned invalid JSON
• LLM_ENDPOINT must use http:// or https:// (got scheme {schem

AI-assisted analysis of MemPalace/mempalace@06cb6987f0 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8c09e6ae48e8d621. Report an issue: GitHub.