Step-by-Step Guide to Install Apache OFBiz on Linux

Published in

TheSecMaster

5 min readJan 2, 2024

Apache OFBiz is a feature-rich open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It provides a suite of business applications out of the box to manage tasks like accounting, inventory control, order fulfillment, warehouse management, CRM, e-commerce, and more within one unified system.

OFBiz is written in Java and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. It supports various databases like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, and H2.

In this comprehensive tutorial, we will go through installing the latest version of Apache OFBiz 17.12.06 from scratch on an Ubuntu 20.04 Linux server.

We will set up all the prerequisites like Java and MySQL servers. Then download, configure and launch OFBiz along with setting up the database. Finally, we will log into the application using the default credentials and you will have OFBiz ready for testing out its various modules.

So let’s get started with installing this feature-rich open-source ERP on Linux.

Table of contents

· Prerequisites
∘ Step 1 — Download Apache OFBiz
∘ Step 2 — Initialize Gradle and Load Data
∘ Step 4 — Start Apache OFBiz
∘ Step 5 — Access Apache OFBiz
· Bottom Line

Prerequisites

The installation has two key prerequisites — Java Development Kit (JDK) 8+ and Git. (We will use OpenJDK 11 in this guide.)

First, verify if Java is already installed:

java -version

If Java is missing or lower than 8, refer to these tutorials to install Java 8 on Ubuntu/Debian/Mint or RHEL/CentOS systems.

Next, install Git if it’s not present:

sudo apt install git

Now we are ready to proceed with the the Apache Open For Business Project installation.

Step 1 — Download Apache OFBiz

We will install Apache OFBiz 18.12.11, the latest stable version at the time of writing. Download and extract the release archive using wget and unzip:

wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/ofbiz/apache-ofbiz-18.12.11.zip
unzip apache-ofbiz-18.12.11.zip
mv apache-ofbiz-18.12.11 /opt/ofbiz
cd /opt/ofbiz

This will place the extracted OFBiz directory at /opt/ofbiz.

Step 2 — Initialize Gradle and Load Data

OFBiz uses the Gradle build system. Navigate to the installation directory and initialize the Gradle wrapper:

sh gradle/init-gradle-wrapper.sh

This downloads the gradle-wrapper.jar file into gradle/wrapper.

Now clean the existing data and load fresh OFBiz datasets:

./gradlew cleanAll loadAll

This will take a few minutes to complete. Wait until it gets completed.

clean the existing data and load fresh OFBiz datasets

clean the existing data and load fresh OFBiz datasets finish

Step 4 — Start Apache OFBiz

With the configuration complete, start the OFBiz server:

./gradlew ofbiz

Wait until the console displays Started in X seconds. indicating a successful start.

Step 5 — Access Apache OFBiz

You can now access the OFBiz interface at:

https://your_server_ip:8443/myportal/control/main

That completes the installation! You now have a working instance of Apache OFBiz on Linux.

Bottom Line

In this detailed guide, you successfully installed the latest Apache OFBiz 18.12.05 from scratch on an Ubuntu 20.04 Linux system.

We started by verifying the installation prerequisites — Java 8+ and Git. Then downloaded the OFBiz archive, extracted it and initialized the Gradle build system.

Next, we loaded the default OFBiz data and seeded the demo data for testing purposes. Finally, the application server was started and accessed through the browser at port 8443.

You now have a working OFBiz instance with various enterprise-level applications ready to meet business needs like:

Accounting: Financial/cost accounting, invoicing, payment processing, taxation and more.
Inventory Management: Warehouse, stock control, product catalog and inventory accounting.
Order Management: Shopfront, shopping cart, order creation, processing, fulfillment and tracking.
CRM: Accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, cases, activities, commissions and associate portals.
HR Management: Organizational model, positions, employees, hiring, attendance/timesheets, payroll, benefits and retirement.
Manufacturing: Bills of materials, work orders, workflows, manufacturing runs, quality control and production planning.

Additionally, OFBiz offers an extensible framework to build custom modules, integrate with external systems and customize business processes to your exact specifications.

So go ahead and explore the various pre-built applications. Or start developing tailored solutions leveraging the flexible architecture of this powerful open source ERP suite.

The full documentation is available at OFBiz Wiki to help you on your journey.

Let us know in the comments if you have any issues getting Apache OFBiz running on your system.

We hope this post helps learning how to install Apache OFBiz on a Linux machine. Thanks for reading this tutorial post. Visit our website thesecmaster.com and social media page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Medium & Instagram, and subscribe to receive updates like this.

This post is originally published at thesecmaster.com

We thank everybody who has been supporting our work and requests you check out thesecmaster.com for more such articles.