Now comes the moment you've been waiting for. To start our first instance, we first create a new empty database and then use the odoo-bin script with the following command-line arguments:

• -d database_name: Use this database by default.
• --db-filter=database_name$: Only try to connect to databases that match the supplied regular expression. One Odoo installation can serve multiple instances that live in separate databases, and this argument limits the available databases. The trailing $ is important as the regular expression is used in match mode; this allows to to avoid selecting names starting with the specified string.
• --addons-path=directory1,directory2,...: This is a comma-separated list of directories in which Odoo will look for add-ons. This list is scanned at instance creation time to populate the list of available add-on modules in the instance.

If you are using a database user with a database login that is different from your Linux login, you need to pass the following additional arguments:

• --db_host=localhost: Use a TCP connection to the database server
• --db_user=database_username: Use the specified database login
• --db_password=database_password: This is the password for authenticating against the PostgreSQL server

To get an overview of all available options, use the --help argument. We will see more of the odoo-bin script later in this chapter, as well as in Chapter 2, Managing Odoo Server Instances.

When Odoo is started on an empty database, it will first create the database structure that's needed to support its operations. It will also scan the add-ons path to find the available add-on modules and insert some into the initial records in the database. This includes the admin user with the default admin password, which you will use for authentication.

Odoo includes an HTTP server. By default, it listens on all local network interfaces on TCP port 8069, so pointing your web browser to http://localhost:8069/ leads you to your newly created instance.