How to Set up Automatic Odoo Backup

Introduction

Before we begin talking about how to set up automatic Odoo Backup, let's briefly understand – What is Odoo?

Odoo is the most widely used open ERP system written in Python, with PostgreSQL serving as the database backend.

Odoo is widely used open ERP with Python & PostgreSQL.

Odoo stores its data on a PostgreSQL database. Every person who has an Odoo installation must regularly back up their database in order to prevent possible catastrophic data loss.

In this tutorial, you will set up automatic Odoo Backup. We will also address a few FAQs on how to set up automatic Odoo Backup.

Odoo database management interface

The Odoo database management interface includes tools for backing up, replicating, deleting, creating, and restoring databases. The database management interface makes it simple to create a backup. All you have to do is launch your browser and go to http://your_server_ip:8069/web/database/manager.

The following display will be shown to you:

A new popup will appear once you click the Backup link.

After entering your Odoo database master password, click the blue Backup button to start a backup.

The amount of time it takes for the backup to be ready will depend on the size of the database.

Create a database backup from the command line

Now that we understand how to generate a backup using the Odoo database management interface, how can we use the same tool to create a backup from the command line? The solution is simple. Use curl or wget. We can use POST to transfer data from both tools to the Odoo database tool in order to pass the required variables to it.

In the example below, the Master Password is ADMIN_PASSWORD, and we are making a back_up_filename.zip of a database named DB_NAME, which will be saved in the backup_dirdirectory.

curl -X POST -F 'master_pwd=ADMIN_PASSWORD' -F 'name=DB_NAME' -F 'backup_format=zip' -o /backup_dir/back_up_filename.zip http://localhost:8069/web/database/backup

You can use the following command if you prefer wget to curl:

wget --post-data 'master_pwd=ADMIN_PASSWORD&name=DB_NAME&backup_format=zip' -O /backup_dir/back_up_filename.zip http://localhost:8069/web/database/backup

Enter the URL to your Odoo instance if you wish to create a backup from a remote location rather than localhost. It is advisable to utilize HTTPS in this case, since you do not want your password to be sent as plain text over the Internet.

More information on configuring Odoo with Nginx as a reverse-proxy may be found here.

Setup Automatic Odoo Backup

We may set up a cron job to automatically back up our Odoo database at regular intervals.

Let's assume we want to back up our Odoo database every day at 1:30 am and save the seven most recent backups.

We will develop a simple bash script that you can name however you prefer:

#!/bin/bash

# vars
BACKUP_DIR=~/odoo_backups
ODOO_DATABASE=db1
ADMIN_PASSWORD=superadmin_passwd

# create a backup directory
mkdir -p ${BACKUP_DIR}

# create a backup
curl -X POST \
    -F "master_pwd=${ADMIN_PASSWORD}" \
    -F "name=${ODOO_DATABASE}" \
    -F "backup_format=zip" \
    -o ${BACKUP_DIR}/${ODOO_DATABASE}.$(date +%F).zip \
    http://localhost:8069/web/database/backup


# delete old backups
find ${BACKUP_DIR} -type f -mtime +7 -name "${ODOO_DATABASE}.*.zip" -delete

Using chmod, make the script executable:

sudo chmod +x ~/backup_odoo.sh

The final step is to set up a new cron job to run every day at 1:30 am:

crontab -e

30 1 * * * /home/<yourusername>/backup_odoo.sh

The script can be changed to adopt a more reliable backup strategy, such as using remote backup storage, performing weekly and monthly backups, etc.

Restore an Odoo Database

Go to http://your_server_ip:8069/web/database/manager in your browser to restore a database backup using the database management interface.

When you click the Restore Database button, a new popup window will appear.

Enter your Odoo database master password, choose the backup file, type in the new database name, and then click the blue Continue button to restore the database.

The restoration procedure could take some time, depending on the size of the database and your Internet speed.

We can also use the command line to restore the database:

curl -F 'master_pwd=superadmin_passwd' -F backup_file=@/opt/odoo/odoo_backups/db1.2018-04-14.zip -F 'copy=true' -F 'name=db3' http://localhost:8069/web/database/restore

You will need to modify the command with your Odoo Master password, the location of the database backup, and the name of the database, of course.

The output should appear as follows if the restoration is successful:

Output

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<title>Redirecting...</title>
<h1>Redirecting...</h1>
<p>You should be redirected automatically to target URL: <a href="/web/database/manager">/web/database/manager</a>.  If not click the link.

FAQs to Set up Automatic Odoo Backup

Conclusion

You now understand how to create automatic daily backups of your Odoo databases using a cronjob.

If you have any queries, feel free to leave a comment below, and we'll be happy to help.