How to Install ERPNext on Ubuntu 20.04
If you’re looking to run an open‑source ERP system right on your own server, this quick guide shows how to get ERPNext up and running on Ubuntu 20.04. It covers the bare minimum packages, a sane MariaDB setup, Redis, Node.js, and the bench bootstrap that makes everything work together.
1. Get ready: the prerequisites
- Make sure you’re logged in as a user with sudo rights.
- Update your system so you’re not pulling from stale repos:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
The upgrade will patch known bugs that might otherwise trip up the later install steps.
2. Install MariaDB and secure it
ERPNext depends on MySQL‑compatible storage, so we’ll use MariaDB because it ships with Ubuntu 20.04.
sudo apt install mariadb-server -y sudo mysql_secure_installation
During mysql_secure_installation set a strong root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root logins, and delete the test database. These steps are trivial but avoid headaches later when you try to create a new ERPNext user.
3. Add the Frappe repository and install bench
The easiest way to keep your ERPNext installation up‑to‑date is via the bench CLI from the Frappe team.
sudo apt install python3-pip -y pip3 install frappe-bench --user
Add the bench binary path to your shell profile so you can run it without typing the full path:
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$(python3 -c "import site; print(site.USER_BASE)")/bin' >> ~/.profile source ~/.profile
4. Bootstrap a new bench instance
Create a fresh directory for your ERPNext stack and bootstrap it. This pulls the latest Frappe & ERPNext code, installs Node.js and Yarn (which bench needs), and sets up virtual environments.
mkdir ~/erpnext-bench && cd ~/erpnext-bench bench init erpnext-bench --frappe-path https://github.com/frappe/bench.git --python python3.8
If you’re on a machine with more than 4 GB RAM, consider adding --with-mysql and --mysql-user root flags to skip the MySQL installation that bench would otherwise try.
5. Create an ERPNext site
Now tell bench to spin up your first site, providing it with a domain or IP you’ll use later for HTTPS.
cd ~/erpnext-bench/bench-sessions bench new-site erp.example.com --mariadb-root-password YOUR_ROOT_PASS --admin-password admin123
Replace erp.example.com with the hostname you plan to point at this machine. If you’re only testing locally, just use localhost.
6. Deploy ERPNext and start services
bench get-app erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext.git --branch version-13 bench --site erp.example.com install-app erpnext
Then launch the stack:
bench start
Your ERPNext instance will now be listening on http://localhost:8000. Open that URL in a browser and log in with the admin credentials you set earlier.
7. Make it production‑ready
- Enable HTTPS – Use Certbot or another ACME client to get Let’s Encrypt certs.
- Set up cron jobs – bench setup worker ensures background tasks run.
- Monitor logs – Keep an eye on /home/username/erpnext-bench/logs/*.log.
I’ve seen people hit the dreaded “socket timeout” error when installing via pip on older Ubuntu releases. It’s usually because the default Python 3 version is missing some dependencies that bench expects. That’s why we explicitly install python3-pip and use the latest stable Python from Ubuntu 20.04.
And there you have it: a working ERPNext installation on Ubuntu 20.04, ready for real data, custom modules, or a full‑blown business system.
