I installed v7 along with the v8 I already had in place. I renamed the 'openerp-server' executable in /usr/bin to 'odoo8-server', and copied the 'openerp-server' from the v7 directory to /usr/bin as 'openerp7-server' to save on confusion. I thought this would allow me to start either version at will (don't need to run both at the same time). However, running 'openerp7-server' still launches v8! I think this is because the 'import openerp' line in the executable is finding the v8 version of the class/module first. Is it possible to specify a path to the exact version of the module/class inside the v7 executable script? It didn't work when I tried it, but I know very little Python.

I did a hackaround by running the 'openerp-server' out of the directory created by untarring the latest .tar.gz file and specifying a config file. I also had to make separate v7 and v8 custom module directories, as the v7 server will get confused by v8 modules that reside in the specified addons directory. So, separate .conf files for each server, and in each respective file, specify the correct custom module directory path!