Installing Odoo 8 on CentOS 6 with Python 2.7

Update 28 May 2016: This tutorial has been re-tested and updated to include the latest changes. It’s confirmed working. Thank you to everyone for your contributions in the comments section. I hope you find the tutorial useful!

This tutorial will walk you through the process of installing the latest version of Odoo on CentOS 6. It is intended for those who might not be experienced Linux administrators but who want to run their own Odoo server. You can simply copy-paste the commands into your terminal or SSH window.

The tutorial is fully tested on CentOS 6.5 but should work for any 6.x version. Please see my other tutorial for CentOS 7 instructions.

First we will install the PostgreSQL database server, then install the necessary package dependencies. Next we will create a virtual Python environment (so we don’t interfere with the CentOS version) and install all the modules Odoo requires. Then it’s time to pull the latest Odoo code from GitHub and create a CentOS 6 compatible init script. Finally we will add the necessary firewall rules and connect to the server.

This tutorial assumes you have already performed a minimal install of the latest version of CentOS 6.5 on a server dedicated to just running Odoo. It also assumes you will be running Odoo on the same server as the PostgreSQL database. You will need at least 1GB of available RAM for lxml to install, although this can include SWAP space.

Odoo is a complicated installation with many dependencies and can be quite resource intensive. I highly recommend you install on a server (or real or virtual) that is dedicated to Odoo. Co-locating Odoo with existing websites/applications is likely to cause problems at some point.

1: Generate Odoo Passwords

Before starting installation we will generate two passwords. The first line generates a strong random password for the odoo server to access the PostgreSQL database that we will install. The second line is the master password you will use to create the Odoo database after the installation is complete. Don’t worry about these for now. After the installation is complete you will find both these passwords in the Odoo configuration file (/etc/odoo-server.conf).

Important: You must run these commands as the root user

ODOO_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=`< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-20};echo;`
ODOO_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=`< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-20};echo;`
echo && echo "**** Make a note of these generated passwords ****" && echo "Odoo Postgres DB User Password:" $ODOO_POSTGRES_PASSWORD && echo "Odoo Master Password:" $ODOO_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD && echo

2: Install and configure PostgreSQL

First will install the PostgreSQL version 9.5. Unfortunately the CentOS 6 official respository only contains older versions, so we will need to install directly from the PostgreSQL repositories. We use the repository rather than simply downloading an RPM because it’s easier to keep up to date with important security and maintenance updates. This command will add the PostgreSQL repository to your server:

rpm -ivh https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/9.5/redhat/rhel-6-x86_64/pgdg-redhat95-9.5-2.noarch.rpm

It’s important we exclude postgresql from the official CentOS repository files, otherwise we will encounter problems when we run updates:

sed -i 's/^gpgkey.*/&\nexclude=postgresql*/' /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

Installing PostgreSQL and some associated libraries is now straightforward. We then need to initialise the database.

yum -y install postgresql95 postgresql95-server postgresql95-devel postgresql95-libs
service postgresql-9.5 initdb

Next we need to configure PostgreSQL so it will accept connections using MD5 hashed passwords so it’s compatible with the Python modules:

sed -i "/^host/s/ident/md5/g" /var/lib/pgsql/9.5/data/pg_hba.conf

Finally let’s add PostgreSQL to the list of services which will be enabled at startup. We then start the PostgreSQL server and add the Odoo user with the password we generated in step 1.

/sbin/chkconfig --level 35 postgresql-9.5 on
service postgresql-9.5 start

echo -e "$ODOO_POSTGRES_PASSWORD\n$ODOO_POSTGRES_PASSWORD\n" | su - postgres -c "createuser --createdb --username postgres --no-createrole --no-superuser --pwprompt odoo"

3: Installing Python

Odoo requires a modern version of Python lot of additional libraries. Potentially these could conflict with the Python libraries supplied in CentOS 6 and relied upon by the built in administration tools. So to avoid this risk we will create a virtual environment under the Odoo system user account which will be used solely by the Odoo server.

First lets make sure all the packages on your CentOS install are up-to-date. If we don’t do this, then you will end up with endless version conflicts:

yum clean all
yum -y update

Next let’s install the Odoo package dependencies:

yum -y install wget gcc zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel readline-devel tk-devel gdbm-devel db4-devel libffi-devel libxslt libxslt-devel libxml2 libxml2-devel openldap-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel openjpeg-devel libtiff-devel git libpng libXext libz.so.1 xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi curl cabextract

We also need the wkhtmltopdf package in order to generate PDF reports in Odoo. This link is for the 64bit version of CentOS. For 32bit change ‘amd64’ to ‘i386’ in the filename below.

rpm -ivh http://download.gna.org/wkhtmltopdf/0.12/0.12.2/wkhtmltox-0.12.2_linux-centos6-amd64.rpm
ln -s /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf /usr/bin/

Optional: You may wish to install Microsoft’s Core Fonts so they are available when you generate reports in Odoo. First we need to install some dependencies, then the msttcore-fonts-installer rpm downloads the fonts from sourceforge, installs them and activates them on your CentOS server.

For 64 bit (x86) CentOS installs ONLY:

rpm -ivh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/libmspack-0.5-0.1.alpha.el6.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/cabextract-1.5-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mscorefonts2/rpms/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

For 32 bit (i386) CentOS installs ONLY:

rpm -ivh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i686/libmspack-0.5-0.1.alpha.el6.i686.rpm
rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i686/cabextract-1.5-1.el6.i686.rpm
rpm -ivh https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mscorefonts2/rpms/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

Now let’s download and install Python 2.7.8 from source. The first command removes any existing python2.7 installs from previous attempts. Note after compiling we use “altinstall” to prevent overwriting the CentOS default python installation. We will do the Python build in the root users home directory as some CentOS installs prevent the execution of compiled C programs in the /tmp/ directory for security reasons (see “noexec” in /etc/fstab):

rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7
cd /root/
wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.9/Python-2.7.9.tgz
tar -xzf Python-2.7.9.tgz
cd Python-2.7.9
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath /usr/local/lib"
make
make altinstall

With Python successfully installed it’s time to add the Python virtual environment (virtualenv) and the PIP module installation utility:

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | /usr/local/bin/python2.7
/usr/local/bin/easy_install-2.7 pip virtualenv

Next let’s create an Odoo user and setup the virtual environment.

adduser odoo

DIR="/var/run/odoo /var/log/odoo /opt/odoo"
for NAME in $DIR
do
if [ ! -d $NAME ]; then
   mkdir $NAME
   chown odoo.odoo $NAME
fi
done

4: Installing Python modules in a virtual environment

Odoo requires a lot of Python modules to run. With the Python virtual environment successfully created we now need to add all the additional modules.

Important note for WHM/cPanel users: If your hosting provider is using WHM/cPanel to manager your server, you must enable compiler access for the odoo user otherwise the Python and additional modules installation will fail. See here for instructions on how to enable compiler access. You can disable compiler access again after Odoo installation is completed.

Important: Commands in this section must be run as the odoo user

First let’s switch from root to the odoo user, then create a new virtual environment called odoo and activate it:

su - odoo

/usr/local/bin/virtualenv --python=/usr/local/bin/python2.7 odoo
source odoo/bin/activate

Before starting the module installation we need to add the path to the PostgreSQL binaries, otherwise the PsycoPG2 module install will fail:

export PATH=/usr/pgsql-9.5/bin:$PATH

To avoid warnings about “SNIMissing” you need to update ndg-httpsclient:

pip install --upgrade ndg-httpsclient

5: Installing Odoo 8 from GitHub

Now it’s finally time to install Odoo itself. We are going to download the latest version of Odoo 8 from the GitHub repository. Note that we are installing into the /opt directory so we can easily manage the installation in a single location and keep it separate from the rest of the operating system.

Important: These commands must be run as the odoo user

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/odoo/odoo.git --branch 8.0
chown -R odoo.odoo odoo

Now let’s install all the Python module dependencies. We will use the list included with the Odoo distribution to ensure we install the correct versions. Once installed we exit the Odoo user account and return to the root user.

export PATH=/usr/pgsql-9.5/bin:$PATH
pip install -r /opt/odoo/requirements.txt
exit

Let’s create a basic Odoo server configuration file. The passwords we created earlier should be automatically populated from the environment variables. I’ve also dialled back the logging so we only see warnings and fatal errors. I’m located in the UK, so the timezone is set to Europe/London.

Important: All the following commands must be run as the root user

cat > /etc/odoo-server.conf << EOF
[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
admin_passwd = $ODOO_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD
; DATABASE OPTIONS
db_host = localhost
db_port = 5432
db_user = odoo
db_password = $ODOO_POSTGRES_PASSWORD
; MISC SETTINGS
addons_path = /opt/odoo/addons
load = web
timezone = Europe/London
without-demo=all
; LOG SETTINGS
logfile = /var/log/odoo/odoo-server.log
log_handler = werkzeug:WARNING
log_level = warn
no-logrotate = True

EOF

chown root.odoo /etc/odoo-server.conf
chmod 640 /etc/odoo-server.conf

I also like to enable logrotation using the built in CentOS tools so the logs are managed in the same way as all the other applications.

cat > /etc/logrotate.d/odoo-server << EOF
/var/log/odoo/*.log {
    copytruncate
    missingok
    notifempty
}
EOF

Next we create a script to easily start and stop the Odoo server. We download a pre-created init script, then use a sed script to modify the startup command so it plays nicely with the virtual Python environment we created earlier.

wget -O /etc/init.d/odoo https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Johnzero/OE7/master/install/openerp-server.init

sed -i "s/openerp/odoo/g" /etc/init.d/odoo
sed -i "s/OpenERP/Odoo/g" /etc/init.d/odoo

sed -i "s/\/usr\/bin\/setsid \/usr\/bin\/odoo-server/~\/odoo\/bin\/python \/opt\/odoo\/openerp-server/" /etc/init.d/odoo

chmod +x /etc/init.d/odoo
/sbin/chkconfig --level 35 odoo on

The final step in this section is to add the necessary firewall rules. The redirect command accepts connection on port 80 and redirects them to the default Odoo port 8069. This avoids your users having to remember to enter the port number each time.

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 5432 -i lo -j ACCEPT -m comment --comment "Accept local connections to PostgreSQL"
/sbin/iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8069 -m comment --comment="Redirect Odoo HTTP requests to 8069"
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8069 -j ACCEPT -m comment --comment "Accept inbound Odoo connections"
/etc/init.d/iptables save

6: Launching Odoo and logging in

To start Odoo, simply run the init script:

/etc/init.d/odoo start

You should be able to open a browser and connect to your Odoo server IP address on port 80.

The first time you login, the “Create a New Database” page should appear. You should enter the following details to setup the first database:

Master password = [the “admin_password” in /etc/odoo-server.conf]
Select a database name = [any name you want]
Load demonstration data = [I recommend you tick this box for your first database]
Default language = [select your language as appropriate]
Choose a password = [choose a password for your “admin” user]
Confirm password = [confirm a password for your “admin” user]

Click “Create Database” and after a few seconds you should be automatically logged into Odoo as the “admin” user. Hooray!

To login subsequent times, at the login page instead of entering an email address you should enter “admin” and the password you created on the “Create a New Database” page.

If you create multiple databases then you can switch between them by browsing to this address: http://x.x.x.x/web/database/selector (where x.x.x.x is your server IP address)

If something isn’t working, you can check the logfiles in /var/log/messages and /var/log/odoo/odoo-server.log to make sure everything started correctly. Note you can also use “/etc/init.d/odoo restart” and “/etc/init.d/odoo stop” to restart and stop Odoo as required.

tail -50f /var/log/odoo/odoo-server.log

7: Updating Odoo

If you want to update the Odoo code to the latest version you can easily do that by stopping the server then performing a “git pull”. Note that you must only do the git pull as the odoo user.

/etc/init.d/odoo stop
su - odoo
cd /opt/odoo
git pull
exit
/etc/init.d/odoo start

I hope this guide helps you get Odoo 8 up and running on CentOS 6.5. Let me know how you get on in the comment section, and also check out my other tutorials.