Odoo is one of the most popular business softwares in the world. There are several ways to install Odoo depending on the required use case.

The easiest and quickest way to install Odoo is by using their official repositories.

If you want to have more control over versions and updates or if you want to run multiple Odoo versions on your machine then this approach will not work for you because the Odoo package doesn’t allow multiple Odoo installations on the same machine. In this case you can either use docker and docker compose or install Odoo in a Python virtual environment.

This guide covers the steps necessary for installing and configuring Odoo using Git source and Python virtual environment on Ubuntu 16.04.

Before you begin

Before continuing with this tutorial, make sure you are logged in as a user with sudo privileges.

Update the packages index and all installed packages to the latest packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install Git, Pip, Node.js and the tools required to build Odoo dependencies:

sudo apt install git python3-pip build-essential python3-dev libxslt-dev libzip-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev node-less

Create Odoo user

Create a new system user and group with home directory /opt/odoo that will run the Odoo service:

useradd -m -d /opt/odoo -U -r -s /bin/bash odoo

You can name the user as you like, just make sure you create a PostgreSQL user with the same name.

Install and configure PostgreSQL

Install the PostgreSQL package from the Ubuntu’s default repositories:

sudo apt install postgresql

Once the installation is complete create a new PostgreSQL user with the same name as the previously created system user, in our case that is odoo:

sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo"

Install Wkhtmltopdf

In order to print PDF reports, you will need the wkhtmltopdf tool. The recommended version of Wkhtmltopdf is 0.12.1 which is not available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 repositories. We’ll download and install the recommended version from the official Wkhtmltopdf site.

Download the package using the following wget command:

wget https://builds.wkhtmltopdf.org/0.12.1.3/wkhtmltox_0.12.1.3-1~xenial_amd64.deb

Once the download is completed install the package by typing:

sudo apt install ./wkhtmltox_0.12.1.3-1~xenial_amd64.deb

Install and configure Odoo

We will install Odoo from the GitHub repository in an isolated Python environment so we can have more control over versions and updates.

Before starting with the installation process, make sure you switch to user “odoo”:

sudo su - odoo

To confirm that you are logged in as user odoo, use the following command:

whoami

Start with the installation process by cloning the Odoo source code from the GitHub repository:

git clone https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo --depth 1 --branch 11.0 /opt/odoo/odoo11
  • If you want to download and install a different Odoo version just change the version number after the --branch switch.
  • You can download Odoo source code to any as you like, for example instead odoo11 you can use the name of your domain.

virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments. To install it use:

pip3 install virtualenv

Create a new Python virtual environment for the Odoo installation with:

cd /opt/odoovirtualenv odoo11-venv

Activate the environment:

source odoo11-venv/bin/activate

Install all required Python modules:

pip3 install -r odoo11/requirements.txt

If you encounter any compilation errors during the installation, make sure that you installed all of the required dependencies listed in the Before you begin section.

Once the installation is completed deactivate the environment and switch back to your sudo user using the following commands:

deactivate
exit

If you intend to install additional modules it is best to keep those modules in a separate directory. To create a new directory for the additional modules run:

sudo mkdir /opt/odoo/odoo11-custom-addonssudo chown odoo: /opt/odoo/odoo11-custom-addons

The next thing we need to do is to create a configuration file. We can either create a new one from scratch or copy the included configuration file:

sudo cp /opt/odoo/odoo11/debian/odoo.conf /etc/odoo11.conf

Open the file and edit it as follows:

sudo nano /etc/odoo11.conf

/etc/odoo11.conf

[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
admin_passwd = my_admin_passwd
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo
db_password = False
addons_path = /opt/odoo/odoo11/addons
; If you are using custom modules
; addons_path = /opt/odoo/odoo11/addons,/opt/odoo/odoo11-custom-addons

Once you are done, close and save the file.

Do not forget to change the my_admin_passwd to something more secure and adjust the addons_path if you’re using custom modules.

Create a systemd unit file

To run odoo as a service we need to create a odoo11.service unit file in the /etc/systemd/system/ directory.

Open your text editor and paste the following lines:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/odoo11.service

/etc/systemd/system/odoo11.service

[Unit]
Description=Odoo11
Requires=postgresql.service
After=network.target postgresql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
SyslogIdentifier=odoo11
PermissionsStartOnly=true
User=odoo
Group=odoo
ExecStart=/opt/odoo/odoo11-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo/odoo11/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo11.conf
StandardOutput=journal console

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Notify systemd that a new unit file is created and start the Odoo service by executing:

sudo systemctl daemon-reloadsudo systemctl start odoo11

Check the service status with the following command:

sudo systemctl status odoo11

The output should look something like below indicating that Odoo service is active and running.

● odoo11.service - Odoo11
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/odoo11.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-01-23 21:09:25 UTC; 1s ago
 Main PID: 14146 (python3)
   CGroup: /system.slice/odoo11.service
           └─14146 /opt/odoo/odoo11-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo/odoo11/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo11.conf

Enable the Odoo service to be automatically started at boot time:

sudo systemctl enable odoo11

If you want to see the messages logged by the Odoo service you can use the command below:

sudo journalctl -u odoo11

Test the Installation

Open your browser and type: http://:8069

Assuming the installation is successful, a screen similar to the following will appear:

At this point you have a working Odoo 11 installation. You can finish the installation by creating a new database and start working on your project.

Conclusion

That’s it! This tutorial walked you through the installation of Odoo 11 on Ubuntu 16.04 in a Python virtual environment.

To learn how to configure your Odoo with Nginx as a reverse proxy and how to access your Odoo Installation via HTTPS you can check out the following post:

Configure Odoo with Nginx as a reverse proxy

You may also want to check our tutorial about how to create automatic daily backups of your Odoo databases.

If you hit any problems, leave a comment below.