Nexus

This page explains how to setup and configure NEXUS Maven repositories.

Requirements

a) You need to setup Maven

Installation

Create user / group

# Create group
addgroup --system "nexus"
 
# Create Nexus user (home directory must be Nexus)
adduser --home /opt/nexus --disabled-login --disabled-password nexus

Prepare work folder

You need to create a root folder to host all the artifacts. !!! This will be bigger and bigger over time !!!

mkdir -p /home/nexus
chmod -R 777 /home/nexus
chown -R nexus:nexus /home/nexus

Get binaries

Download Nexus OSS as Nexus Open-Source Server - take the ZIP format

• http://www.sonatype.org/nexus/go/

cd /opt
wget http://www.sonatype.org/downloads/nexus-latest-bundle.tar.gz
tar xzvf nexus-latest-bundle.tar.gz
rm nexus-latest-bundle.tar.gz
ln -s /opt/nexus-2.11.4-01/ /opt/nexus

Set rights

chown -R nexus:nexus /opt/nexus
chown -R nexus:nexus /opt/nexus-2.11.4-01

Set nexus parameters

Adjust the port number and root context path, if required

vim /opt/nexus/conf/nexus.properties

Set:

application-port=9081
application-host=127.0.0.1
nexus-webapp-context-path=/nexus

## Nexus section
## nexus-work ==>> folders where the artifacts are going to be saved. You must choose a folder with a lot of disk!
nexus-work=/home/nexus
runtime=${bundleBasedir}/nexus/WEB-INF

Log symlink

ln -s /opt/nexus/logs/wrapper.log /var/log/nexus.log

Set Nexus user and rights

vim /opt/nexus/bin/nexus

# Set the correct home
NEXUS_HOME="/opt/nexus"

#uncomment and adjust
RUN_AS_USER="nexus"
#The PID directory must be a directory where you the runtime user can Read/Write
PIDDIR="/opt/nexus"

Start / stop server

To start|stop the server:

/opt/nexus/bin/nexus start

ERROR Fix

If you encounter the Failed to start Nexus OSS error, then you need to:

chown -R nexus:nexus /opt/sonatype-work

Run Nexus from anywhere

Set the NEXUS_HOME into the start script. Without it you cannot run Nexus as a service!

ln -s /opt/nexus/bin/nexus /usr/bin/nexus
ln -s /opt/nexus/bin/nexus /etc/init.d/nexus

vim /opt/nexus/bin/nexus

Start Nexus on boot

vim /opt/nexus/bin/nexus

Add the following declaration after the first line #!/bin/sh :

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             Nexus
# Required-Start:       $all
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
# Short-Description:    Nexus
### END INIT INFO

Register the program to the boot sequence:

cd /etc/init.d/
update-rc.d nexus defaults

Apache2 proxy

Put the following lines into your Apache2 proxy configuration:

   ## Proxy to NEXUS
   <Location /nexus/ >
       ProxyPass http://localhost:9081/nexus/
       ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:9081/nexus/
       Require all granted
       satisfy any
   </Location>

Nexus server access

You can access your server on http://myServer/nexus/ (Don't forget the end '/')

The default user and password are:

• User: admin
• Pwd: admin123

Maven client configuration

All repositories of type “proxy” need to change “Download Remote Indexes” property to true in the configuration tab.

As you see there are several types of repositories.

• proxy – acts as proxy for external repository.
• hosted – repository that managed artifact produced by you
• virtual – kind of adapter for e.g transforming maven1 to maven 2 format.
• group – maybe not a repository in sonatyp’s terminology but behaves like one. A group groups several repositories to one exposing result as single URI.

Global configuration (settings.xml)

To set the Global configuration, edit your Maven/conf/settings.xml and add:

<mirrors>
  <mirror>
    <id>nexus</id>
    <mirrorOf>*</mirrorOf>
   <url>https://dev.daxiongmao.eu/nexus/content/groups/public</url>
  </mirror>
</mirrors>

Project POM update

As an alternative you can update the project's POM to ensure everyone uses your repository.

Put this before the [BUILD] section of your POM.

	<distributionManagement>
		<repository>
			<id>nexus</id>
			<url>https://dev.daxiongmao.eu/nexus/content/repositories/releases/</url>
			<layout>default</layout>
			<snapshots>
				<updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
			</snapshots>
			<releases>
				<updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
			</releases>
		</repository>
		<snapshotRepository>
			<id>nexus</id>
			<url>https://dev.daxiongmao.eu/nexus/content/repositories/snapshots/</url>
			<layout>default</layout>
			<snapshots>
				<updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
			</snapshots>
			<releases>
				<updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
			</releases>
		</snapshotRepository>
	</distributionManagement>
	<repositories>
		<repository>
			<id>dev.daxiongmao.eu</id>
			<url>https://dev.daxiongmao.eu/nexus/content/repositories/public/</url>
		</repository>
	</repositories>

Now your maven client knows only your nexus and everything it needs and how it gets it, should be controlled by nexus.