Odoo is the most popular all-in-one business software in the world. It offers a range of business applications, including CRM, website, e-Commerce, billing, accounting, manufacturing, warehouse, project management, inventory, and much more, all seamlessly integrated.

Odoo can be installed in different ways, depending on the use case and available technologies. The easiest and quickest way to install Odoo is by using the official Odoo APT repositories.

Installing Odoo in a virtual environment, or deploying as a Docker container, gives you more control over the application and allows you to run multiple Odoo instances on the same system.

This article explains how to install and deploy Odoo 14 inside a Python virtual environment on CentOS 8. We’ll download Odoo from the official GitHub repository and use Nginx as a reverse proxy.

Installing Prerequisites #

Odoo is written in Python. The first step is to install Python 3 , Git, pip , and all the libraries and tools required to build Odoo from source:

sudo dnf install python3 python3-devel git gcc sassc redhat-rpm-config libxslt-devel  \    bzip2-devel openldap-devel libjpeg-devel freetype-devel

Creating a System User #

Running Odoo under the root user is not allowed, as it is a security risk. Create a new system user and group with home directory /opt/odoo that will run the Odoo service:

sudo useradd -m -U -r -d /opt/odoo14 -s /bin/bash odoo14

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

Installing and Configuring PostgreSQL #

Odoo uses PostgreSQL as the database back-end. We’ll install PostgreSQL 12 from the standard CentOS 8 repositories:

sudo dnf install @postgresql:12

Once the installation is completed, create a new PostgreSQL database cluster:

sudo postgresql-setup initdb

Enable and start the PostgreSQL service:

sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql

Create a PostgreSQL user with the same name as the previously created system user. In this example, that is odoo14:

sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo14"

Installing Wkhtmltopdf #

wkhtmltopdf is a set of open-source command-line tools for rendering HTML pages into PDF and various image formats. To print PDF reports in Odoo, you’ll need to install the wkhtmltox package. The recommended version for Odoo is version 0.12.5, which can be download and installed from Github:

sudo dnf install https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/releases/download/0.12.5/wkhtmltox-0.12.5-1.centos8.x86_64.rpm

Installing and Configuring Odoo 14 #

We’ll install Odoo from the source inside an isolated Python virtual environment.

First, change to user “odoo14”:

sudo su - odoo14

Clone the Odoo 14 source code from the Odoo GitHub repository:

git clone https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo --depth 1 --branch 14.0 /opt/odoo14/odoo

Navigate to the /opt/odoo14 directory and create a new Python virtual environment for the Odoo installation:

cd /opt/odoo14python3 -m venv venv

Activate the environment using the source command:

source venv/bin/activate

Install the required Python modules:

pip3 install -r odoo/requirements.txt

Once done, deactivate the environment by typing:

deactivate

Create a new directory for the custom addons:

mkdir /opt/odoo14/odoo-custom-addons

We’ll add this directory to the addons_path parameter. This parameter defines a list of directories where Odoo searches for modules.

Switch back to your sudo user:

exit

Create a configuration file with the following content:

sudo nano /etc/odoo14.conf

[options]
admin_passwd = superadmin_passwd
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo14
db_password = False
addons_path = /opt/odoo14/odoo/addons, /opt/odoo14/odoo-custom-addons

Save and close the file.

Creating Systemd Unit File #

Open your text editor and create a service unit file called odoo14.service with the following content:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/odoo14.service

Paste the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Odoo14
Requires=postgresql.service
After=network.target postgresql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
SyslogIdentifier=odoo14
PermissionsStartOnly=true
User=odoo14
Group=odoo14
ExecStart=/opt/odoo14/venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo14/odoo/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo14.conf
StandardOutput=journal+console

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Notify systemd that a new unit file exists:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start and enable the Odoo service:

sudo systemctl enable --now odoo14

Verify that Odoo is running with the following command:

sudo systemctl status odoo14

The output should look something like below, showing that the Odoo service is active and running:

● odoo14.service - Odoo14
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/odoo14.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-11-02 20:12:24 UTC; 3s ago
...

To see the messages logged by the Odoo service, use the following command:

sudo journalctl -u odoo14

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:

If you can’t access the page, make sure port 8069 is open in your firewall :

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=8069/tcpsudo firewall-cmd --reload

Configuring Nginx as SSL Termination Proxy #

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

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

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

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

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

Open your text editor and create/edit the domain server block:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com

The following configuration sets up SSL Termination, HTTP to HTTPS redirection , WWW to non-WWW redirection, cache the static files, and enable GZip compression.

# 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;

    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’re done, restart the Nginx service :

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Next, we need to tell Odoo to use the 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 odoo14

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

Changing the Binding Interface #

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

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

We’ll 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 odoo14

Enabling Multiprocessing #

By default, Odoo is working in multithreading mode. For production deployments, it is recommended to change to the multiprocessing server as it increases stability and makes better usage of the system resources.

To enable multiprocessing, you 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 and the available RAM.

According to the official Odoo documentation , to calculate the workers’ number and required RAM memory size, you can 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 require CPU

RAM memory size calculation

• We will consider that 20% of all requests are heavy requests, and 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, use the following grep command:

grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo

Let’s say you 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, you can use 5 workers + 1 worker for the cron worker, a total of 6 workers.

Calculate the RAM consumption based on the number of workers:

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

The calculation shows that the Odoo installation will need around 2GB of RAM.

To switch to multiprocessing mode, open the configuration file and append the calculated values:

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 odoo14

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 the same server. Depending on your set up you may also have other services running on your server.

Conclusion #

This article walked you through the installation of Odoo 14 on CentOS 8 in a Python virtual environment using Nginx as a reverse proxy. We’ve also shown you how to enable multiprocessing and optimize Odoo for a production environment.

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

If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment below.