This document describes basic steps to set up Odoo in production. It follows installation, but should not be used for development systems.

dbfilter

Odoo is a multi-tenant system: a single Odoo system may run and serve a number of database instances. It is also highly customizable, with customizations (starting from the modules being loaded) depending on the "current database".

This is not an issue when working with the backend (web client) as a logged-in company user: the database can be selected when logging in, and customizations loaded afterwards.

However it is an issue for non-logged users (portal, website) which aren't bound to a database: Odoo need to know which database should be used for the operations or to get the data. If multi-tenancy is not used that is not an issue, there's only one database to use, but if there are multiple databases accessible Odoo needs a rule to know which one it should use.

That is one of the purposes of --db-filter: it specifies the default database for the Odoo system. The value is a regular expression, possibly including the dynamically injected hostname or subdomain through which the Odoo system is accessed.

If an Odoo hosts multiple databases in production, especially if website is used, it must use a dbfilter or a number of features will not work correctly or not use at all.

PostgreSQL

By default, PostgreSQL only allows connection over UNIX sockets and loopback connections (from "localhost", the same machine the PostgreSQL server is installed on).

UNIX socket is fine if you want Odoo and PostgreSQL to execute on the same machine, and is the default when no host is provided, but if you want Odoo and PostgreSQL to execute on different machines 1 it will need to listen to network interfaces 2, either:

  • only accept loopback connections and use an SSH tunnel between the machine on which Odoo runs and the one on which PostgreSQL runs, then configure Odoo to connect to its end of the tunnel
  • accept connections to the machine on which Odoo is installed, possibly over ssl (see PostgreSQL connection settings for details), then configure Odoo to connect over the network

Configuring Odoo

Out of the box, Odoo connects to a local postgres over UNIX socket via port 5432. This can be overridden using the database options when your Postgres deployment is not local and/or does not use the installation defaults.

The packaged installers will automatically create a new user (odoo) and set it as the database user.

  • The database management screens are protected by the admin_passwd setting. This setting can only be set using configuration files, and is simply checked before performing database alterations. It should be set to a randomly generated value to ensure third parties can not use this interface.
  • all database operations use the database options, including the database management screen. For the database management screen to work requires that the user have createdb right.

  • users can always drop databases they own. For the database management screen to be completely non-functional, the user needs to be created with no-createdb and the database must be owned by a different user.

HTTPS

Whether it's accessed via website/web client or the webservice, Odoo transmits authentication information in cleatext. This means a secure deployment of Odoo must use HTTPS3. SSL termination can be implemented via just about any SSL termination proxy, but requires the following setup:

  • enable Odoo's proxy mode. This should only be enabled when Odoo is behind a reverse proxy
  • set up the SSL termination proxy (Nginx termination example)
  • set up the proxying itself (Nginx proxying example)
  • your SSL termination proxy should also automatically redirect non-secure connections to the secure port

Builtin server

Odoo includes built-in HTTP servers, using either multithreading or multiprocessing.

For production use, it is recommended to use the multiprocessing server as it increases stability, makes somewhat better use of computing resources and can be better monitored and resource-restricted.

  • Multiprocessing is enabled by configuring a non-zero number of worker processes, the number of workers should be based on the number of cores in the machine (possibly with some room for cron workers depending on how much cron work is predicted)
  • Worker limits can be configured based on the hardware configuration to avoid resources exhaustion

LiveChat

In multiprocessing, a dedicated LiveChat worker is automatically started and listening on the longpolling port but the client will not connect to it.

Instead you must have a proxy redirecting requests whose URL starts with /longpolling/ to the longpolling port. Other request should be proxied to the normal HTTP port

Odoo as a WSGI Application

It is also possible to mount Odoo as a standard WSGI application. Odoo provides the base for a WSGI launcher script as openerp-wsgi.py. That script should be customized (possibly after copying it) to correctly set the configuration directly in openerp.tools.config rather than through the command-line or a configuration file.

However the WSGI server will only expose the main HTTP endpoint for the web client, website and webservice API. Because Odoo does not control the creation of workers anymore it can not setup cron or livechat workers

Cron Workers

To run cron jobs for an Odoo deployment as a WSGI application requires

  • a classical Odoo (run via odoo.py)
  • connected to the database in which cron jobs have to be run (via odoo.py -d)
  • which should not be exposed to the network. To ensure cron runners are not network-accessible, it is possible to disable the built-in HTTP server entirely with odoo.py --no-xmlrpc or setting xmlrpc = False in the configuration file

LiveChat

The second problematic subsystem for WSGI deployments is the LiveChat: where most HTTP connections are relatively short and quickly free up their worker process for the next request, LiveChat require a long-lived connection for each client in order to implement near-real-time notifications.

This is in conflict with the process-based worker model, as it will tie up worker processes and prevent new users from accessing the system. However, those long-lived connections do very little and mostly stay parked waiting for notifications.

The solutions to support livechat/motifications in a WSGI application are:

  • deploy a threaded version of Odoo (instread of a process-based preforking one) and redirect only requests to URLs starting with /longpolling/ to that Odoo, this is the simplest and the longpolling URL can double up as the cron instance.
  • deploy an evented Odoo via openerp-gevent and proxy requests starting with /longpolling/ to the longpolling port.

Serving Static Files

For development convenience, Odoo directly serves all static files in its modules. This may not be ideal when it comes to performances, and static files should generally be served by a static HTTP server.

Odoo static files live in each module's static/ folder, so static files can be served by intercepting all requests to /MODULE/static/FILE, and looking up the right module (and file) in the various addons paths.

Security

"Super-admin" password

Configuring Odoo mentioned admin_passwd in passing.

This setting is used on all database management screens (to create, delete, dump or restore databases).

If the management screens must not be accessible, or must only be accessible from a selected set of machines, use the proxy server's features to block access to all routes starting with /web/database except (maybe) /web/database/selector which displays the database-selection screen.

If the database-management screen should be left accessible, the admin_passwd setting must be changed from its admin default: this password is checked before allowing database-alteration operations.

It should be stored securely, and should be generated randomly e.g.

$ python -c 'import base64, os; print(base64.b64encode(os.urandom(24)))'

which will generate a 32 characters pseudorandom printable string.

[1] to have multiple Odoo installations use the same PostgreSQL database, or to provide more computing resources to both software.
[2] technically a tool like socat can be used to proxy UNIX sockets across networks, but that is mostly for software which can only be used over UNIX sockets
[3] or be accessible only over an internal packet-switched network, but that requires secured switches, protections against ARP spoofing and precludes usage of WiFi. Even over secure packet-switched networks, deployment over HTTPS is recommended, and possible costs are lowered as "self-signed" certificates are easier to deploy on a controlled environment than over the internet.