Published April 24, 2019 by

Install Nexus on Ubuntu Linux


Sonatype Nexus is one of the best repository managers out there. It is some tool that you cannot avoid in your CI/CD pipeline. It effectively manages deployable artifacts.

This article guides you to install and configure Sonatype Nexus 3 in a secure way on a Ubuntu Linux System.

Install Java
 apt-get update  
 apt install openjdk-8-jre-headless  

Download Nexus
 cd /opt  
   
 wget https://sonatype-download.global.ssl.fastly.net/repository/repositoryManager/3/nexus-3.16.1-02-unix.tar.gz  
   
 tar -zxvf nexus-3.16.1-02-unix.tar.gz  
   
 mv /opt/nexus-3.16.1-02 /opt/nexus  

As a good security practice, it is not advised to run nexus service as root. so create a new user called nexus and grant sudo access to manage nexus services
 sudo adduser nexus  


Set no password for nexus user and enter below command to edit sudo file
 visudo  

Add the below line and Save.
 nexus   ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL

Change file and owner permission for nexus files
 sudo chown -R nexus:nexus /opt/nexus  
 sudo chown -R nexus:nexus /opt/sonatype-work  

Add nexus as a service at boot time

Open /opt/nexus/bin/nexus.rc file, uncomment run_as_user parameter and set it as following.
 vim /opt/nexus/bin/nexus.rc  
   
 run_as_user="nexus" (file shold have only this line)  

Add nexus as a service at boot time
 sudo ln -s /opt/nexus/bin/nexus /etc/init.d/nexus

Log in as a nexus user and start service
 su - nexus  
 /etc/init.d/nexus start  

Now, log in nexus server from a browser on port 8081 
http://<Nexus_server>:8081

Use default credentials to log in

username: admin
password: admin123