[Answer] How to Evaluate the Newly Released Odoo 15?

Odoo is one of the best open-source ERP platforms in the world, and its Enterprise edition offers very cost-effective services. Since most articles about installing Odoo were written for older operating systems and older Odoo versions, this article introduces a method for installing Odoo 15 on Ubuntu 20.04.

1. Installation Preparation

Download the Odoo 15 Community or Enterprise installation package and extract it into the odoo directory. Update the system packages and install the required supporting packages. Before updating packages, you can switch Ubuntu's software source to the Tsinghua mirror to improve installation speed; see the related article for details. After changing the Ubuntu software source, you may encounter the error Certificate verification failed. In that case, you need to download the ca-certificates package; see the related article for details.

# Update package list
sudo apt-get update -y
# Install supporting packages
sudo apt install python3-pip build-essential wget python3-dev python3-venv python3-wheel libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libzip-dev libldap2-dev libpq-dev libsasl2-dev python3-setuptools node-less nodejs npm
# Add an odoo15 user for running Odoo later, with /opt/odoo15 as the home directory
sudo useradd -m -d /opt/odoo15 -U -r -s /bin/bash odoo15

2. Install the Database and Other Tools

Odoo uses PostgreSQL as its default database.

# Install PostgreSQL and add an odoo15 database user
sudo apt-get install -y postgresql
sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo15"
# Download and install the wkhtml PDF tool; choose the package according to your Ubuntu version
wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6-1/wkhtmltox_0.12.6-1.focal_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./wkhtmltox_0.12.6-1.focal_amd64.deb

3. Copy and Run

# First go to the directory containing the extracted odoo folder, then copy the entire odoo folder to the target location
sudo cp -rf ./odoo /opt/odoo15
# Switch to the odoo15 user and run the installation commands
sudo su - odoo15
# Change to the odoo15 directory
cd /opt/odoo15
# Create and activate a new Python virtual environment for Odoo
python3 -m venv odoo-venv
# Activate the Odoo environment
source odoo-venv/bin/activate
# Change the pip mirror to the Tsinghua source to speed up installation
pip config set global.index-url https://pypi.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/simple
# Install the required packages via pip
pip3 install wheel
pip3 install -r /opt/odoo15/odoo/requirements.txt
deactivate
# Create a directory for third-party add-ons
mkdir /opt/odoo15/odoo-custom-addons
# Exit the odoo15 user
exit

4. Modify the Odoo Configuration

Modify the configuration files according to the following steps and content.

4.1 Modify the Odoo Configuration File

# Use vi to create and edit an Odoo configuration file, or use another editor
sudo vi /etc/odoo15.conf

Below is the content of odoo15.conf:

[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
admin_passwd = admin
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo15
db_password = False
;logfile = /opt/odoo15/odoo15.log
addons_path = /opt/odoo15/odoo/odoo/addons,/opt/odoo15/odoo-custom-addons

4.2 Add the Odoo 15 System Service

Since an Odoo crash may prevent the service from staying up, Restart-related directives are added to the system service so that Odoo can automatically restart after a crash. Note that if the issue is caused by a system fault, Odoo may restart repeatedly. In that case, you need to stop the service manually through the system service manager.

# Use vi or another editor to create a new service file and fill it with the following content
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/odoo15.service

Below is the content of odoo15.service:

[Unit]
Description=Odoo15
Requires=postgresql.service
After=network.target postgresql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
SyslogIdentifier=odoo15
PermissionsStartOnly=true
User=odoo15
Group=odoo15
ExecStart=/opt/odoo15/odoo-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo15/odoo/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo15.conf
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10s
StandardOutput=journal+console

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Common system service commands:

# Reload daemons to enable Odoo
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Restart the odoo15 service
sudo systemctl restart odoo15
# Check the status of the odoo15 service
sudo systemctl status odoo15
# Enable the odoo15 service at boot
sudo systemctl enable odoo15

5. Final Step

Open http://<your-server-ip>:8069 to access and manage your Odoo instance. If you are using a cloud server, or if the server firewall is enabled, make sure the cloud server's security group allows port 8069 and that the firewall also permits traffic on port 8069. On Ubuntu, you can check UFW firewall status and allow the port with the following commands.

# Check firewall status
sudo ufw status
# Allow port 8069
sudo ufw allow 8069

After the Odoo service starts, you should access the URL as soon as possible to initialize the database and configure the initial administrator email and password. Be sure to remember the database password as well as your administrator username and password, otherwise you may later lose access to the website or the database. Once initialization is complete, you can start using Odoo 15.