Installing an OpenERP appliance

For serious work with OpenERP the server should be installed in Linux
We'll assume that will want to have your work environment hosted on Windows.

This can be achieved by running the OpenERP server on a Linux virtual machine.
In broad steps, you should:

• Install VMWare Player; as an alternative you may try Virtual Box.
• Download and install the Turnkey PostgreSQL appliance.
• Using the appliance's web console, install the OpenERP server and web client from the sources, following "The Open Sourcer's" instructions.It's recommended to use the a stable branch (6.0 at the time of writing) and to install as services. 

In order to have easy acces to the server files, like addons folders and log files, you should also install Samba, the file sharing service. Share the /opt/openerp folder, where all your OpenERP should be stored.

If you configure the log file to be written there, you can then follow it on your Windows host, using a log file viewer like BareTail.

The result is a very portable server with a memory footprint below 300 kb.

All you need to do to start working is to start the virtual machine, check the IP address assigned to it, and point your browser at the corresponding 8080 port. Point Windows Explorer to \\IPAddress and you will access the servers files. Open the log in your log viewer and you will be following the server messages.