llama.cpp Adds --shard Flag for Multi-Location Model Loading and Separate PLE Files
pmttyji · reddit · 2026-11-10
A new llama.cpp PR (#31185) introduces a --shard CLI argument for loading model shards from multiple locations, with the common use case of loading PLE (engram) files from a separate GGUF.
Key points:
- Conversion support for all PLE-capable models, building both PLE-less and PLE-only GGUFs
- Multi-shard loading lets you combine shards from different providers and share a common model fragment across quants/releases
- An optional flag overrides the shard file count check to load differently packed fragments
- --shard and --ple are aliases with no semantic difference
Sample usage:
llama-server -m model-shard-00001-of-00003.gguf --shard /other/drive/model-shard-00003-of-00003.gguf
llama-server -m model-with-ple.gguf --ple model-engrams.gguf
A practical engineering improvement for local deployments spanning multiple drives or shard sources.
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