Openbravo ERP beta package for Ubuntu Karmic available for testing

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of the Openbravo ERP beta package for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.

Earlier this year, Openbravo increased its line up of deployment options by making an Openbravo ERP server available as a package for Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

This option proved to be very popular and resulted in more than 2000 unique installations during the first month alone. Leveraging this package Ubuntu users have been able to setup a working Openbravo environment for either either evaluation or production purposes with just one command. Additionally, customers of our Professional Subscription offer have been able to acquire a fully supported Ubuntu stack at a very competitive price.

We are now in the process of making this deployment option available for the latest version of Ubuntu, 9.10 Karmic. Not only this package will support the latest Ubuntu version but it will also include several improvements based on the experience we gained with Jaunty.

Finally, this package is the first step to include Openbravo into Ubuntu’s next long term support release, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx.

We plan the production availability of Openbravo ERP for Karmic in the January 2010 time frame. Today, however, we are proud to announce its immediate availability in beta status.

This beta package will allow us to improve the quality of the final release of the package, so we encourage you to test and provide us feedback.

This is a beta package, so keep in mind these important notes:

• Do not use it in production environments.
• The official release of this package is scheduled for mid-January.
• This beta package is built with Openbravo ERP 2.50MP9, but the final package will have Openbravo ERP 2.50MP10.

The instructions to test the package:

1. You should have a running Ubuntu Karmic installation.
2. Add the Openbravo ERP PPA’s GPG key to your apt keyring:

   sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C2F11D81
   

3. Add openbravo-erp launchpad repository URL’s:

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openbravo-isv/ppa/ubuntu karmic main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openbravo-isv/ppa/ubuntu karmic main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
   

4. Update the apt-get cache:

   sudo apt-get update
   

5. Install the openbravo-erp package:
   • By command line:

     sudo apt-get install openbravo-erp
     

   • Using graphical interface:
     Search in Synaptic for openbravo-erp.

Compared to the Jaunty version, these are the features included in this version of the package:

• Don’t compile at install time, ship binaries. It reduces the installation time.
• Add Apache and connect with Tomcat using the mod_jk connector. So that now Openbravo ERP is accessed from http://ip_address/openbravo and we can use the fine tunning of Apache (e.g. gzip compression enabled).
• Add the BigBazaar sample data, with a lot more data to test the Openbravo ERP functionalities.
• Use PostgreSQL 8.4.1 instead of 8.3.8. With this we’ll start our 8.4 support in Openbravo ERP.
• Manage our PostgreSQL database cluster in the Debian/Ubuntu way: using pg_cluster. With this feature you can start/stop openbravo-erp cluster with pg_ctlcluster start/stop 8.4 openbravo-erp. To list the status of the clusters you can use pg_lsclusters. Also you can still use /etc/init.d/openbravo-erp-postgresql script.
• Removing the package without the purge option now maintains the database and the sources. In the previous version of the package maintains the database, but for avoiding inconsistencies between the sources/binaries and database, now it is maintained the sources/binaries and the database.
• Centralized directory to read all the logs from our stack, (PostgreSQL, Apache, Tomcat, mod_jk). You can find all this logs at /opt/OpenbravoERP-2.50/logs.
• Clean and simplify the installation output to make it shorter and to display only the most relevant installation points.
• Secure the Tomcat Manager to allow connections from the ERP only.
• Ability to update every part of the package except for Openbravo ERP.   So the apt-get upgrade command will update your  Tomcat, PostgreSQL or Apache configurations for Openbravo ERP, but will not update your Openbravo ERP version. The ERP updates are managed through the Module Management Console inside Openbravo ERP.

And the fixed issues:

• Installation hangs in localized Ubuntus (#435412, #410182, #442484)
• Fixed JAVA_HOME issue when updating Core.
• Global variables are correctly set if user openbravo already exits. This perform a backup of the existing /home/openbravo/.profile in /home/openbravo/.profile.bak
• (many other minor fixes)

We’re very excited with this package, help us fine tuning it for the final version!

Gorka

UPDATE:  see the list of known issues

(EDIT: fixed the command to add the repository URLs to sources.list)