Odoo on Ubuntu: How I Installed It

What I Did

I installed Odoo (open-source ERP) on Ubuntu for a project. These are the exact steps I ran — all apt commands on Ubuntu.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Run this command to create a system user for Odoo:

sudo adduser -system -home=/opt/odoo -group odoo

Odoo needs PostgreSQL as its database, so install it with:

sudo apt-get install postgresql -y

sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo" 2> /dev/null || true

Odoo requires some Python packages. Install them with:

sudo apt-get install libpq-dev python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev libffi-dev

sudo -H pip3 install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/odoo/odoo/master/requirements.txt

You’ll need Node.js and npm:

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm -y

sudo npm install -g rtlcss

Odoo uses Wkhtmltopdf to generate PDFs. Install it with:

sudo apt-get install xfonts-75dpi

sudo wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6-1/wkhtmltox_0.12.6-1.bionic_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i wkhtmltox_0.12.6-1.bionic_amd64.deb

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

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

Create a log directory so Odoo can store its logs:

sudo mkdir /var/log/odoo

sudo chown odoo:odoo /var/log/odoo

Get Odoo from GitHub:

sudo apt-get install git

sudo git clone --depth 1 --branch 14.0 https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo /odoo/odoo-server

Give Odoo ownership of its files:

sudo chown -R odoo:odoo /odoo/*

Set up Odoo’s configuration:

sudo touch /etc/odoo-server.conf

sudo su root -c "printf '[options] \n; This is the password that allows database operations:\n' >> /etc/odoo-server.conf"

sudo su root -c "printf 'admin_passwd = admin\n' >> /etc/odoo-server.conf"

sudo su root -c "printf 'xmlrpc_port = 8069\n' >> /etc/odoo-server.conf"

sudo su root -c "printf 'logfile = /var/log/odoo/odoo-server.log\n' >> /etc/odoo-server.conf"

sudo su root -c "printf 'addons_path=/odoo/odoo-server/addons\n' >> /etc/odoo-server.conf"

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

sudo chmod 640 /etc/odoo-server.conf

Finally, let’s fire it up!

sudo su - odoo -s /bin/bash

cd /odoo/odoo-server

./odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo-server.conf

Now your Odoo instance is up and running! Open your browser and go to:

localhost:8069