How I successfully installed ERPNext V13 on Ubuntu 20.04 Virtualbox with Easy Install

[pss]

I seem to have successfully installed an ran ERPNext v13 production on Ubuntu 20.04 in Virtualbox with the Easy Install Script. The process taken is below for reference, and I can make corrections and additions in response to the comments. I am not sure I will be able to provide as much assistance in the event there is a failure. Some decisions may not have been the proper way to do it, strictly speaking, but they got me the outcome I needed:

1. Install Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop Edition in Virtualbox. A user that is not root is created in the process. I suggest naming it “frappe-user” to match the user expected in the easy-install script. I strongly recommend installing the guest additions for your convenience.

2. Update the system

   sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

3. Restart the system, and run the command in step 2 again. Restart the system one more time.

4. Open the terminal. Create a folder called ERPNext

   mkdir ERPNext

5. Go to that ERPNext folder

   cd ERPNext

6. Install required packages. I cannot recall anymore, but a few packages, including git and make and one other package needed to be installed. If anyone can provide a full list, please reply.

   sudo apt install git make

7. Install the additional packages. python3-testresources was a package that prevented the Easy-Install Script from successfully running the first few times.

   sudo apt install git libffi-dev python3-pip python3-minimal build-essential python3-distutils python3-setuptools libssl-dev wkhtmltopdf python3-testresources

8. Download the Easy Install Script. While the documentation says to use the develop branch, I think this is a bad idea, and it is better to use the v5.x branch’s install.py file. My assumption is that this is the production version of the install script and less prone to changes that will break the installation.

   bench/install.py at v5.x · frappe/bench (github.com)

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/frappe/bench/v5.x/install.py

9. Perform the following step.

   export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8

10. Run the installation. I was unsuccessful running it with the user flag. I was successful running it without the flag.

    sudo python3 install.py --production --version 13

    During the installation, when prompted, make the password for MariaDB password, and the password for Administrator admin

11. Wait until you see success or failure message.

12. In VirtualBox settings, add the following port forwarding rules to access ERPNext from your host. I think you need vm_http port forwarding rule only. You can then access ERPNext from localhost:8080 in your host web browser.

I hope this works for you and is helpful.

Credits: I started from this post, and then adapted steps accordingly. Install v13 Production on Ubuntu 20.04 VPS - This is how I did it “Easy Install” script - Discuss Frappe/ERPNext. There were a few other sources I referred to for some commands aside from the EasyInstall Documentation that I can no longer recall (ex. update and upgrade command, installing python3-testresources, etc).

[pss]

One thing I have not yet figured out or tested is where this installation is located. I am also not sure how to run bench to upgrade installation to the current version of V13. If anyone has suggestions and can investigate this further, it will be much appreciated.

[mwrsa]

Well, it’s installed to ~/frappe-bench
Concerning the upgrade - that didn’t work at all for me, no matter what I tried it was never entirely successful. All I got was one single run that went through despite some errors, but that one gave me another error on login or most of the times when I switched back to the desk. See here:

After painful Upgrade V.12 > V.13: Error upon login

It took me only 8 attempts (including restoring the VM a couple of times) and a whole day to get the update to go through - most of the time I got the “uncommitted changes in frappe app” error which was a lie: Uninstalling the custom theming_tool app helped big time, after that I only had to apply the “cannot pickle module objects” solution from this thread here: Update fails - TypeError: can't pickle module objects After dancing through the office a couple of rounds because of the success afte…

[pss]

Thank you. I wanted to confirm: can bench commands be run from that ~/frappe-bench folder to upgrade for example, from 13.2 to 13.3 (in comparison to an update from v12 to v13)? Similarly, bench start and other common commands.

[mwrsa]

While I did not try to update, I managed to export all of my data out of my V.12 installation (backup) and successfully restored it in this V.13 installation. For that I ran the bench restore command from ~/frappe-bench without any issues. Also the folder structure seems to be just the same.

[pss]

Thank you. That helped me a lot. My installation was located in /home/frappe/frappe-bench . I did not give my user permission to run commands on that folder, but the bench can be run with sudo bench _____ when in this folder in the termal.