How to Install Odoo 14 on Debian 11 with Apache as a Reverse Proxy

Odoo (formerly known as OpenERP) is a suite of open-source business applications. The most used modules for Odoo include Point of Sale (POS), Inventory, CRM, Website, Live Chat, e-Commerce, Billing, Accounting, Warehouse, and others. The range of the modules that can be installed in one application makes Odoo very popular nowadays.

installing odoo 14 on debian 11 with apache as a reverse proxy

Let’s learn how to install and start using Odoo 14 on a Debian OS. Remember, if you want to skip this part and let others automate it for you, you can do so by subscribing to any Debian hosting plan and acquiring all the assistance you’ll ever need. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Odoo 14 on Debian 11 with Apache as a reverse proxy.

Prerequisites

A Debian 11 VPS.
At least 2GB of RAM.
SSH access with sudo privileges, or root access.

Step 1. Update System

First of all, we need to log in to our Debian 10 VPS through SSH:

ssh master@IP_Address -p Port_number

Replace “master” with a user that has sudo privileges or root if necessary. Additionally, replace “IP_Address” and “Port_Number” with your server’s respective IP address and SSH port number. Next, let’s make sure that we’re on Debian 11. You can verify it with this command:

$ lsb_release -a

You should get this as the output:

Distributor ID: Debian<br>Description: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bulleseye)<br>Release: 11<br>Codename: bullseye

setting up odoo 14 on debian 11 with apache as a reverse proxy

Then, run the following command to make sure that all installed packages on the server are updated to their latest available versions:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Add System User

We will install the Odoo instance under a system user account. So, we need to create a new system account.

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

Step 3. Install Dependencies

We need to install some Python dependencies to proceed with installing Odoo in our Debian 11 system. Let’s install them by running this command below.

$ sudo apt install build-essential wget git python3-pip python3-dev python3-venv \<br>python3-wheel libfreetype6-dev libxml2-dev libzip-dev libsasl2-dev \<br>python3-setuptools node-less libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev libpq-dev \<br>libxslt1-dev libldap2-dev libtiff5-dev libopenjp2-7-dev

Step 4. Install PostgreSQL

For data storage, Odoo uses PostgreSQL. Invoke the command below to install PostgreSQL on Debian 11.

$ sudo apt install postgresql

Once the installation is completed, add a postgresql user for our Odoo 14, run this command:

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

Step 5. Install Wkhtmltopdf

Wkhtmltopdf is an open-source command line tool to render HTML data into PDF format using Qt webkit. To install wkhtmltopdf on your Debian 11 server, follow these steps below.

$ sudo wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/releases/download/0.12.5/wkhtmltox_0.12.5-1.buster_amd64.deb

$ sudo apt install ./wkhtmltox_0.12.5-1.buster_amd64.deb

$ sudo apt -f install

Step 6. Install Odoo

There are several ways to install Odoo on a Debian 11 machine, But, in this tutorial, Odoo 14 will be installed under a python virtual environment. Let’s switch to system user ‘odoo14’

$ sudo su - odoo14

The command above should bring you to /opt/odoo14 and log in as user ‘odoo14’. Now, download Odoo from Github

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

Create python virtual environment

Run the following command to create a new python virtual environment.

$ python3 -m venv odoo14-venv

The virtual environment is installed, now we need to activate it

$ source odoo14-venv/bin/activate

Once invoked, your shell prompt would look like this:

(odoo14-venv) odoo14@debian11:~$

Next, let’s install Odoo

(odoo14-venv) odoo14@debian11:~$ pip3 install wheel
(odoo14-venv) odoo14@debian11:~$ pip3 install -r odoo14/requirements.txt

Once completed, we can create a new directory to store our custom Odoo addons. This command is run under the system user ‘odoo14’.

(odoo14-venv) odoo14@debian11:~$ deactivate

$ mkdir /opt/odoo14/odoo14/custom-addons

Now, exit from user ‘odoo14’ and create Odoo configuration file.

$ exit<br>$ sudo nano /etc/odoo14.conf

Paste the following contents into the file.

[options]<br>admin_passwd = m0d1fyth15<br>db_host = False<br>db_port = False<br>db_user = odoo14<br>db_password = False<br>addons_path = /opt/odoo14/odoo14/addons,/opt/odoo14/odoo14/custom-addons<br>xmlrpc_port = 8069

Make sure to modify the value of admin_passwd key above to a strong password. This is your Odoo’s master password, you need it to create or delete databases.

Create Odoo Systemd Unit file

In this step, we will create a systemd unit file, it is required to start/stop/restart Odoo.

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

Paste the following content into the systemd unit file above.

[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/odoo14-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo14/odoo14/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo14.conf
StandardOutput=journal+console

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

That’s it. We can now reload systemd and run Odoo.

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload<br>$ sudo systemctl start odoo14

Check if Odoo is starting by running this command:

$ sudo systemctl status odoo14

Open your web browser and navigate to http://YOUR_SERVER_IP_ADDRESS:8069 you would see Odoo page.

how to set up odoo 14 on debian 11 with apache as a reverse proxy

Step 7. Install and Configure Apache

Odoo has been successfully installed at http://YOUR_SERVER_IP_ADDRESS:8069 and if we want to access it through our domain name or sub domain name, we need to create a reverse proxy. In this tutorial, we will use Apache as a reverse proxy to Odoo 14 instance.

To install apache, run this command:

$ sudo apt install apache2

Once installed or if it’s already installed, we can proceed with creating a virtual host file for our Odoo domain/subdomain.

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.com.conf

Then paste the following content into the configuration file. Remember to replace the domain name with your actual domain or sub domain name.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/yourdomain-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Require all granted
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8069/
ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8069/
<Location />
Order allow,deny
Require all granted
</Location>
</VirtualHost>

Save the file then exit and run this command to enable the virtual host.

$ sudo a2ensite yourdomain.com

Do not forget to run the following commands to activate the proxy modules.

$ sudo a2enmod proxy<br>$ sudo a2enmod proxy_http

After enabling the virtual host and proxy, we need to restart apache

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

That’s it! At this point, you should be able to access your Odoo instance both at http://YOURDOMAIN.COM and http://YOUR_SERVER_IP_ADDRESS:8069. To prevent your Odoo instance from being accessible when users access it through its port, we can disable direct access to the Odoo instances by configuring it to listen only on the local interface.

$ sudo nano /etc/odoo14.conf

Add this line:

xmlrpc_interface = 127.0.0.1

Save the file then exit and restart Odoo

$ sudo systemctl restart odoo14

That’s it all. Your Odoo instance is now only accessible from your domain or sub domain name. You can create a new database now.

configuring odoo 14 on debian 11 with apache as a reverse proxy — After creating a new database, you will be brought to the Odoo backend.

how to configure odoo 14 on debian 11 with apache as a reverse proxy

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Odoo 14 on Debian 11.

You can secure your Odoo website by installing a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

Of course, if you are one of our Debian Hosting customers, you don’t have to install Odoo 14 on Debian 11 with Apache as a reverse proxy on your own – simply ask our admins, sit back, and relax. Our admins will install Odoo 14 on Debian 11 with Apache as a reverse proxy for you immediately, along with many useful optimizations that we can do for you. Managing an Odoo website is not just about the installation, we can help you with optimizing your Odoo instance if you have a VPS with us.

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