Installing Odoo on Ubuntu

Make sure your server has all the latest versions & patches. Update the repositories by following command:
sudo apt-get update

The next step is to create a system user which will own the application Odoo. It is not mandatory to create a new user, you can use your current system user as well. Although it is the recommended step to create a new user for Odoo. We can create a new user “odoo” and provide a home directory for it via command below.
sudo adduser --system --home=/opt/odoo --group odoo

Install PostgreSQl with:

sudo apt-get install postgresql

Once the PostgreSQL is installed, next we setup a new PostgreSQL user for our application. This user will be used for making all the database interaction form the Odoo.

sudo su - postgres

createuser --createdb --username postgres --no-createrole --no-superuser --pwprompt odoo

after running this command you will be asked for a password and then a confirmation of that

Enter password for new role: *****

Enter it again:*****

Then finally exist the PostgreSQL by typing the command:

exit

First installing the Python dependencies for Odoo:

sudo apt-get install python-cups python-dateutil python-decorator python-docutils python-feedparser python-gdata python-geoip python-gevent python-imaging python-jinja2 python-ldap python-libxslt1 python-lxml python-mako python-mock python-openid python-passlib python-psutil python-psycopg2 python-pybabel python-pychart python-pydot python-pyparsing python-pypdf python-reportlab python-requests python-simplejson python-tz python-unicodecsv python-unittest2 python-vatnumber python-vobject python-werkzeug python-xlwt python-yaml python-setuptools python-babel python-reportlab-accel python-zsi python-openssl python-egenix-mxdatetime python-unittest2 python-mock python-docutils lptools make python-psutil python-paramiko poppler-utils python-pdftools antiword

Next is to install Less CSS via nodejs. we will start with installing npm:

apt-get install -y npm

In later debian (>jessie) and ubuntu (>14.04) we may need to add a symlink as npm packages call node but debian calls the binary nodejs

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

sudo npm install -g less

sudo apt-get install node-less

Once all the packages are installed we are ready to proceed with installing Odoo server

Make sure you have GIT installed on your system and if not then install with the simple command:

sudo apt-get install git

After installing the the GIT we will clone the Odoo Source in the home directory of the odoo user we created earlier.

sudo su - odoo -s /bin/bash

While cloning the branch from github you can specify the branch you want to clone. For instance we are cloning Odoo 10 branch from the repository

git clone https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo --depth 1 --branch 10.0 --single-branch .

You can use the same command to install any previous versions as well just by changing the –branch 10.0 parameter to the odoo version you wish to install.

This may take some time depending upon your internet connectivity. Once the branch is cloned exit the odoo user by typing command

exit

Odoo uses wkhtmltopdf to convert the html reports into pdf format. But all the versions of wkhtmltopdf does not support odoo. Here is the process to install the supported version for a system with 64 bit architecture. First download the package for installation:

wget http://download.gna.org/wkhtmltopdf/0.12/0.12.1/wkhtmltox-0.12.1_linux-trusty-amd64.deb

Once the package is downloaded install it and copy the files accordingly:

dpkg -i wkhtmltox-0.12.1_linux-trusty-amd64.deb

sudo cp /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf /usr/bin
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltoimage /usr/bin

We have installed all the dependencies now and we are all set to configure the Odoo Server, For this we will first create the directory for storing logs of Odoo server and assigning proper ownership to the directory:

sudo mkdir /var/log/odoo

sudo chown odoo:root /var/log/odoo

Next is to create the configuration file for odoo server. Odoo application will use these configuration to run so fill in the configuration as per your requirements. We will first create a configuration file and specify the configurations:

sudo nano /etc/odoo-server.conf

A sample configuration file looks like this:

[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
; admin_passwd = admin
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo
logfile = /var/log/odoo/odoo-server.log
addons_path = /opt/odoo/addons,/opt/odoo/odoo/addons

Once the configration file is create we will set the ownership rights

sudo chown odoo: /etc/odoo-server.conf
sudo chmod 640 /etc/odoo-server.conf

Once the configuration is created last step is to create a boot script which we will use to start or stop the odoo server.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/odoo-server

A script to start or stop Odoo is already available at path “/opt/odoo/debian/init” but since we have installed the odoo at path /opt/odoo we need to make some minor changes in this script file for the parameter “DAEMON”

Here is how the file will look like after the modification.

#!/bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             odoo-server
# Required-Start:       $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:        $remote_fs $syslog
# Should-Start:         $network
# Should-Stop:          $network
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/opt/odoo/odoo-bin
NAME=odoo-server
DESC=odoo-server
USER=odoo
CONFIGFILE="/etc/odoo-server.conf"
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid

# Additional options that are passed to the Daemon.
DAEMON_OPTS="-c $CONFIGFILE"

[ -x $DAEMON ] || exit 0
[ -f $CONFIGFILE ] || exit 0

checkpid() {
    [ -f $PIDFILE ] || return 1
    pid=`cat $PIDFILE`
    [ -d /proc/$pid ] && return 0
    return 1
}

case "${1}" in
        start)
                echo -n "Starting ${DESC}: "

                start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile ${PIDFILE} \
                        --chuid ${USER} --background --make-pidfile \
                        --exec ${DAEMON} -- ${DAEMON_OPTS}

                echo "${NAME}."
                ;;

        stop)
                echo -n "Stopping ${DESC}: "

                start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile ${PIDFILE} \
                        --oknodo

                echo "${NAME}."
                ;;

        restart|force-reload)
                echo -n "Restarting ${DESC}: "

                start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile ${PIDFILE} \
                        --oknodo
      
                sleep 1

                start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile ${PIDFILE} \
                        --chuid ${USER} --background --make-pidfile \
                        --exec ${DAEMON} -- ${DAEMON_OPTS}

                echo "${NAME}."
                ;;

        *)
                N=/etc/init.d/${NAME}
                echo "Usage: ${NAME} {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
                exit 1
                ;;
esac

exit 0

Now we need to change the ownership and make this script executable

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/odoo-server
sudo chown root: /etc/init.d/odoo-server