From b7870ef6b824bb21b74e496a0f22319c2672fefb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ruben Ortlam <rortlam@redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:50:59 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] fix missing non-required tensors falling back to type f32

---
 src/llama-model-loader.cpp | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/src/llama-model-loader.cpp b/src/llama-model-loader.cpp
index 3d549cae5b..9dbc108036 100644
--- a/src/llama-model-loader.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-model-loader.cpp
@@ -1215,6 +1215,10 @@ struct ggml_tensor * llama_model_loader::create_tensor(
         const int64_t tid = gguf_find_tensor(metadata, tn.str().c_str());
         if (tid != -1) {
             type = gguf_get_tensor_type(metadata, tid);
+        } else if (flags & TENSOR_NOT_REQUIRED) {
+            // If the tensor is not found and not required, return nullptr to allow
+            // the caller to fall back
+            return nullptr;
         }
 
         // for tensors that are not required some of the dimensions can be invalid: