This tutorial covers the steps required for installing and configuring Odoo 12 for production using Git source and Python virtual environment on an Ubuntu 18.04 system.

Before you begin

Login to you Ubuntu machine as a sudo user and update the system 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 wget python3-dev python3-venv python3-wheel libxslt-dev libzip-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev python3-setuptools node-less

Create Odoo user

Create a new system user for Odoo named odoo12 with home directory /opt/odoo12 using the following command:

sudo useradd -m -d /opt/odoo12 -U -r -s /bin/bash odoo12

Install and Configure PostgreSQL

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

sudo apt install postgresql

Once the installation is completed, create a PostgreSQL user with the same name as the previously created system user, in our case that is odoo12:

sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo12"

Install Wkhtmltopdf

The wkhtmltox package provides a set of open-source command line tools which can render HTML into PDF and various image formats. In order to print PDF reports, you will need the wkhtmltopdf tool. The recommended version for Odoo is 0.12.x which is not available in the official Ubuntu 18.04 repositories.

Download the package using the following wget command:

wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/releases/download/0.12.5/wkhtmltox_0.12.5-1.bionic_amd64.deb

Once the download is completed install the package by typing:

sudo apt install ./wkhtmltox_0.12.5-1.bionic_amd64.deb

Install and Configure Odoo

We will install Odoo from the GitHub repository inside an isolated Python virtual environment .

Before starting with the installation process, change to user “odoo12”:

sudo su - odoo12

Start by cloning the Odoo 12 source code from the Odoo GitHub repository:

git clone https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo --depth 1 --branch 12.0 /opt/odoo12/odoo

Once the source code is downloaded, create a new Python virtual environment for the Odoo 12 installation:

cd /opt/odoo12python3 -m venv odoo-venv

Next, activate the environment with the following command:

source odoo-venv/bin/activate

Install all required Python modules with pip3:

pip3 install wheelpip3 install -r odoo/requirements.txt

Deactivate the environment using the following command:

deactivate

Create a new directory for the custom addons:

mkdir /opt/odoo12/odoo-custom-addons

Switch back to your sudo user:

exit

Next, create a configuration file, by copying the included sample configuration file:

sudo cp /opt/odoo12/odoo/debian/odoo.conf /etc/odoo12.conf

Open the file and edit it as follows:

sudo nano /etc/odoo12.conf

[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
admin_passwd = my_admin_passwd
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo12
db_password = False
addons_path = /opt/odoo12/odoo/addons,/opt/odoo12/odoo-custom-addons

Create a Systemd Unit File

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

Open your text editor and paste the following configuration:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/odoo12.service

[Unit]
Description=Odoo12
Requires=postgresql.service
After=network.target postgresql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
SyslogIdentifier=odoo12
PermissionsStartOnly=true
User=odoo12
Group=odoo12
ExecStart=/opt/odoo12/odoo-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo12/odoo/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo12.conf
StandardOutput=journal+console

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Notify systemd that a new unit file exist and start the Odoo service by running:

sudo systemctl daemon-reloadsudo systemctl start odoo12

Check the service status with the following command:

sudo systemctl status odoo12

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

* odoo12.service - Odoo12
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/odoo12.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-10-09 14:15:30 PDT; 3s ago
 Main PID: 24334 (python3)
    Tasks: 4 (limit: 2319)
   CGroup: /system.slice/odoo12.service
           `-24334 /opt/odoo12/odoo-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo12/odoo/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo12.conf

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

sudo systemctl enable odoo12

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

sudo journalctl -u odoo12

Test the Installation

Open your browser and type: http://<your_domain_or_IP_address>:8069

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

Configure Nginx as SSL Termination Proxy

Ensure that you have met the following prerequisites before continuing with this section:

• Domain name pointing to your public server IP. In this tutorial we will use example.com.
• Nginx installed .
• SSL certificate for your domain. You can install a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate .

The default Odoo web server is serving traffic over HTTP. To make our Odoo deployment more secure we will configure Nginx as a SSL termination proxy that will serve the traffic over HTTPS.

SSL termination proxy is a proxy server which handles the SSL encryption/decryption. This means that our termination proxy (Nginx) will handle and decrypt incoming TLS connections (HTTPS), and it will pass on the unencrypted requests to our internal service (Odoo) so the traffic between Nginx and Odoo will not be encrypted (HTTP).

Using a reverse proxy gives you a lot of benefits such as Load Balancing, SSL Termination, Caching, Compression, Serving Static Content and more.

In this example we will configure SSL Termination, HTTP to HTTPS redirection , WWW to non-WWW redirection, cache the static files and enable GZip compression.

Open your text editor and create the following file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com

# Odoo servers
upstream odoo {
 server 127.0.0.1:8069;
}

upstream odoochat {
 server 127.0.0.1:8072;
}

# HTTP -> HTTPS
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name www.example.com example.com;

    include snippets/letsencrypt.conf;
    return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

# WWW -> NON WWW
server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name www.example.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/chain.pem;
    include snippets/ssl.conf;
    include snippets/letsencrypt.conf;

    return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name example.com;

    proxy_read_timeout 720s;
    proxy_connect_timeout 720s;
    proxy_send_timeout 720s;

    # Proxy headers
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

    # SSL parameters
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/chain.pem;
    include snippets/ssl.conf;
    include snippets/letsencrypt.conf;

    # log files
    access_log /var/log/nginx/odoo.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/odoo.error.log;

    # Handle longpoll requests
    location /longpolling {
        proxy_pass http://odoochat;
    }

    # Handle / requests
    location / {
       proxy_redirect off;
       proxy_pass http://odoo;
    }

    # Cache static files
    location ~* /web/static/ {
        proxy_cache_valid 200 90m;
        proxy_buffering on;
        expires 864000;
        proxy_pass http://odoo;
    }

    # Gzip
    gzip_types text/css text/less text/plain text/xml application/xml application/json application/javascript;
    gzip on;
}

Once you are done, restart the Nginx service with:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Next, we need to tell Odoo that we will use proxy. To do so, open the configuration file and add the following line:

proxy_mode = True

Restart the Odoo service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart odoo12

At this point, your server is configured and you can access your Odoo instance at: https://example.com

Change the binding interface

This step is optional, but it is a good security practice.

By default, Odoo server listens to port 8069 on all interfaces. If you want to disable direct access to your Odoo instance you can either block the port 8069 for all public interfaces or force Odoo to listen only on the local interface.

In this guide we will configure Odoo to listen only on 127.0.0.1. Open the configuration add the following two lines at the end of the file:

xmlrpc_interface = 127.0.0.1
netrpc_interface = 127.0.0.1

Save the configuration file and restart the Odoo server for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart odoo12

Enable Multiprocessing

By default, Odoo is working in multithreading mode. For production deployments, it is recommended to switch to the multiprocessing server as it increases stability, and make better usage of the system resources. In order to enable multiprocessing we need to edit the Odoo configuration and set a non-zero number of worker processes.

The number of workers is calculated based on the number of CPU cores in the system and the available RAM memory.

According to the official Odoo documentation to calculate the workers number and required RAM memory size we will use the following formulas and assumptions:

Worker number calculation

• theoretical maximal number of worker = (system_cpus * 2) + 1
• 1 worker can serve ~= 6 concurrent users
• Cron workers also requires CPU

RAM memory size calculation

• We will consider that 20% of all requests are heavy requests, while 80% are lighter ones. Heavy requests are using around 1 GB of RAM while the lighter ones are using around 150 MB of RAM
• Needed RAM = number_of_workers * ( (light_worker_ratio * light_worker_ram_estimation) + (heavy_worker_ratio * heavy_worker_ram_estimation) )

If you do not know how many CPUs you have on your system you can use the following command:

grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo

Let’s say we have a system with 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM memory and 30 concurrent Odoo users.

• 30 users / 6 = **5** (5 is theoretical number of workers needed )
• (4 * 2) + 1 = **9** ( 9 is the theoretical maximum number of workers)

Based on the calculation above we can use 5 workers + 1 worker for the cron worker which is total of 6 workers.

Calculate the RAM memory consumption based on the number of the workers:

• RAM = 6 * ((0.8*150) + (0.2*1024)) ~= 2 GB of RAM

The calculation above show us that our Odoo installation will need around 2GB of RAM.

To switch to multiprocessing mode, open the configuration file and append the following lines:

limit_memory_hard = 2684354560
limit_memory_soft = 2147483648
limit_request = 8192
limit_time_cpu = 600
limit_time_real = 1200
max_cron_threads = 1
workers = 5

Restart the Odoo service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart odoo12

The rest of the system resources will be used by other services that run on this system. In this guide we installed Odoo along with PostgreSQL and Nginx on a same server and depending on your setup you may also have other services running on your server.