This section describes how to set up ODBC connectivity and configure DSNs on several Linux distributions: Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, and Red Hat Linux platforms, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:

OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	18.04
Debian	10
RHEL	8
Fedora	28
SUSE	15

Installing the Driver Dependencies

Run the following commands as root or with sudo to install the necessary dependencies:

• Debian/Ubuntu:
  

  apt-get install libc6 libstdc++6 zlib1g libgcc1

• RHEL/Fedora:
  

  yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc

Installing the Driver

You can use standard package management systems to install the driver.

On Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, run the following command with root or sudo:

dpkg -i /path/to/driver/setup/OdooODBCDriverforUnix.deb 

On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/OdooODBCDriverforUnix.rpm 

Licensing the Driver

Run the following commands to license the driver. To activate a trial, omit the <key> input.

cd /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-odoo/bin/
sudo ./install-license.sh <key>

Connecting through the Driver Manager

The driver manager loads the driver and passes function calls from the application to the driver. You need to register the driver with the driver manager and you define DSNs in the driver manager's configuration files.

The driver installation registers the driver with the unixODBC driver manager and creates a system DSN. The unixODBC driver manager can be used from Python and from many other applications. Your application may embed another driver manager.

Creating the DSN

See Using unixODBC to install unixODBC and configure DSNs. See Using the DataDirect Driver Manager to create a DSN to connect to OBIEE, Informatica, and SAS.

Connecting to Odoo

To connect, set the Url to a valid Odoo site, User and APIToken to the connection details of the user you are connecting with, and Database to the Odoo database.

If you are not using API tokens (they are only supported in Odoo 14 and above), you can also provide the password in the APIToken field.

Access Rights

In order for the driver to determine what models you can access in Odoo, the user you connect with must have permissions to read from "ir.model.access" (an internal Odoo model that governs access rights). Normally this is reserved for administrators, but it can be granted to any user by creating a service group:

1. As an administrator, open the Odoo settings page and enable "developer mode". If this is not available you may need to login as the superuser instead.
2. Open the Groups page (under the Users dropdown) and create a new group
3. Set the Application to "Administration" and the name to "Service Access"
4. Add any users who need service access in the Users tab
5. In the Access Rights tab, add an entry for the "ir.model.access" object (it may be called "Model Access"), check Read Access, and give it the name "Inspect Models"
6. Save the group

If making this change is not possible, then you should set the CheckPermissions option to false. That will list all models in Odoo as tables, regardless of what permissions your user actually has for those models.

Set the Driver Encoding

The ODBC drivers need to specify which encoding to use with the ODBC Driver Manager. By default, the CData ODBC Drivers for Unix are configured to use UTF-16 which is compatible with unixODBC, but other Driver Managers may require alternative encoding.

Alternatively, if you are using the ODBC driver from an application that uses the ANSI ODBC API it may be necessary to set the ANSI code page. For example, to import Japanese characters in an ANSI application, you can specify the code page in the config file '/opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-odoo/lib/cdata.odbc.odoo.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932