Ewen's picture

Hi,

I would be categorized as being at the beginner end of the Linux spectrum. Against that background, I've 'inherited' an old, undocumented and apparently customized installation of OpenERP (v 7.0) which is based on TurnKey Linux. Unfortunately, it's not based on an OpenERP / Odoo TKL appliance, rather it's based on turnkey-postgresql-14.1-jessie-amd64. While some of the mods to OpenERP have been done 'correctly' in additional files, I believe some have been made within the original modules & files themselves.

I have been tasked with identifying the update path for this OpenERP application to a current-version, understood-and-supportable set up of Odoo. I'd thought the most reliable method of doing so would be to use TKLBAM to upgrade to something like turnkey-odoo-15.0-stretch-amd64.

I see that I'm unlikely to be able to use TKLBAM for the migration / upgrade due to the before and after environments being based on different applicances (Postgres v Odoo). Further, from the docs/tklbam-migrate-to-v14 section here, I suspect that even if I did persuade TLKBAM to function with these two differing appliances, I'd potentially wind up with a Turnkey Linux V15.0 installation from the Odoo appliance, but which is still running OpenERP v 7.0 due to software being  installed after-the-fact being backed up and restored as is, rather than being updated.

My main problem is that I don't know enough about it all to sensibly identify the best way forward from what's out there on the Interweb.

I've installed a vanilla turnkey-odoo-15.0-stretch-amd64 appliance with a view to working out if I might get away with building a fresh installation with fresh equivalent modules then importing the data from the old system into this new one. I'm getting a little out of my depth though, not least as the old system seems to have had every OpenERP module and add-on known to man (and indeed woman) installed. I suspect most aren't used but don't know a defnitive way to tell for sure.

Is there any advice people could offer on a good way to approach these challenges (from tracking down 'unauthorized' mods thro identifying used modules to actually migrating over to a nice new Odoo installation)?

Many thanks in advance!

 

Forum: 
Jeremy Davis's picture

As I see it, there are essentially 2 components to your desired upgrade. First is the OS itself (TurnKey v14.x was based on Debian 8/Jessie; TurnKey v15.x is based on Debian 9/Stretch). The second is the update/migration of OpenERP/Odoo to a newer version.

TurnKey/Debian OS migration/upgrade

It's worth explicitly noting (as hinted above) that under the hood, TurnKey is Debian. So your current TurnKey PostgreSQL v14.1 appliance, is based on Debian 8/Jessie and includes PostgreSQL installed via the default Debian repos.

As it's Debian under the hood, one option is to simply do an "in place" Debian upgrade. I won't go into full details here as that is a relatively common upgrade path used by Debian users and you should find plenty of detailed info on that via google. In essence you update your sources.list entries (from 'jessie' to 'stretch') and run an 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade'. Please note though that Debian doesn't support downgrading, so once you start there's not really any going back. As such, I would highly recommend that if you choose that path, before you start ensure that you have a full OS backup (e.g. a "snapshot" or "clone" of the full HDD). TKLBAM is not really suited to that task.

It's also worth noting, that whilst you will get most of the TurnKey related tweaks that exist in v15.x (many are packaged, and the "Debian upgrade" should bring in these new packages), some of our adjustments are done at build time. So in some respects, you will still be running "v14.x" but on a newer Debian base. So whilst you will be running on the same Debian OS as TurnKey v15.x, your server will still report as "turnkey-postgresql-14.1-jessie-amd64" when queried by turnkey-version. Well worth keeping in mind and/or documenting for the next person who needs to maintain this server.

The other option is to use TKLBAM to migrate to a v15.x server (be it PostgreSQL or Odoo). To bring the OpenERP install with you, you'll likely need to adjust the TKLBAM "overrides" (i.e. locations to include in the backup). The best way to do that is to add them to /etc/tklbam/overrides as noted on the tklbam-backup doc page.

Whilst TKLBAM will give a warning if you try to restore a v14.x PostgreSQL appliance backup to a v15.x Odoo appliance, it should still work, at least in part. Where it may get complicated is if there are parts of OpenERP that clash with Odoo. I'm happy to try to assist as best I can, but I can't offer 100% guarantees.

Hopefully that gives you enough to chew on re the OS part of the migration/update. If you have further questions, please ask.

Update/Migrate OpenERP/Odoo to a Newer Version

As we never had a OpenERP appliance (the first OpenERP/Odoo appliance we had included Odoo v8.x), I can't really speak to that side of things in any great detail. But I can (unfortunately) assure you that it will be non-trivial. :( There is no "official" OpenERP/Odoo migration path between versions of OpenERP/Odoo (and unfortunately TKLBAM isn't anywhere near "smart" enough to provide any real assistance there).

The officially sanctioned way to migrate is to pay Odoo to do the migration for you. And as they have been removing open source components since Odoo v8.x (many users lament that Odoo v8 was the last "proper" open source release of Odoo), following that path may lock you into paying them long term (as many of the modules you likely have installed have no free counterpart on newer versions of Odoo).

There are however some "third party" migration scripts. The most popular (and seemingly complete) ones appear to be contained within the OpenUpgrade project (OpenUpgrade docs). OpenUpgrade is essentially a set of scripts provided by OCA (Odoo Community Association). FWIW they are not directly affiliated with the Odoo company themselves, but appear to have at least been somewhat sanctioned. They also aim to (re)implement many of the features/modules that have been removed from the "official" Odoo versions.

So bottom line is that I can't really offer you too much advice WRT to OpenERP/Odoo. Although once again, please feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll do my best to assist.

Wrapping up...

One other piece of info that may be useful is that our current v15.1 Odoo appliance includes Odoo v11.x installed from the Odoo Debian repository. This is also relevant to v15.0 - although v15.1 includes a fix for this issue.

It's also possibly worth noting that the reason why we haven't yet updated Odoo to the latest version (Odoo v12) and still provide Odoo v11 is that once again Odoo appear to have removed more of the open source components from v12. As such, until OCA catch up a bit, we've decided to stick with the older version.

TBH, I'm not 100% sure whether it would be better to seek to migrate OpenERP to a newer version of Odoo first or whether you'd be better off migration OS first.

Sorry that I can't give you some better news and/or specific suggestions, but hopefully that at least gets you headed in the right direction. As I say, please feel free to ask further questions, although I'm not sure how well I'll be able to answer (especially WRT to Odoo specifics). Having said that, I'd be really interested to hear how you get on. And my knowledge of Linux (TurnKey in particular) is pretty sound, so I may still be of use to you yet...! :)

Ewen's picture

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks so much for this. Loads of great information in here - which is much appreciated. After an upcoming afternoon of meetings I will sit down and work my way through everything properly.

Thanks too for the steer on OpenUpgrade / OCA. I did notice that there seemed to be an awful lot of now-paid-for modules with the current version of Odoo. I will check out v.11 and see what that looks like. I suspect even if it's not the very latest version it's going to be better than what we have just now.

I hadn't realised there wasn't ever an OpenERP appliance. That would explain why my predecesor had based things on a Postgres one.

With regard to the OS update, I hadn't thought of doing a Debian upgrade within the current appliance. I will look into that alongside doing a full Turnkey Linux upgrade. I will indeed keep you posted on progress as and when it is made! 

Thanks again :)

 

Jeremy Davis's picture

And whilst I say that I don't have specific knowledge re Odoo itself, my general Linux knowledge is pretty good. And my knowledge of TurnKey is very intimate. :)

Good luck and look forward to hearing how things progress.

Add new comment