Shubh Walsh

Today I wanted to share some simple installation steps on installing Nexus Repository OSS on CentOS 7. Nexus Repository OSS is a free, open source artifact repository with universal format support provided by Sonatype. More information can be found here.

In my case I want to configure a Proxy Repository for Docker Container Images using Nexus Repository OSS. A Proxy Repository can be defined as follows:

I deployed a CentOS 7 Virtual Machine in my lab environment with the following specs:

The System Requirements for Nexus Repository OSS can be found here.

The following tools can be useful for troubleshooting your setup:

This will give you netstat for example.

This allows you to perform telnet commands on the VM.

2. Nexus Repository OSS requires Java 8 Runtime Environment. Check if you have Java installed, if not, make sure to install it:

3. We will be installing Nexus Repository OSS in a specific folder and create another folder for Data & Log files

4. Download the latest version of Nexus Repository OSS:

5. Extract it to our installation directory (/opt/nexus):

6. Create a Service Account called ‘nexus’ to run the Nexus Repository OSS Application under:

7. Set the necessary permissions on the Nexus folders for the nexus Service Account:

8. Configure the Environment Variables:

9. I changed the following options in the $NEXUS_HOME/bin/nexus.vmoptions config file to make sure we are using the correct folders where the nexus Service Account has permissions on:

10. Configure the run_as_user option in the Nexus Repository OSS Configuration file $NEXUS_HOME/bin/nexus.rc :

11. Create a SystemD Service File in /etc/systemd/system/nexus.service

12. (Optionally – if not using a SystemD Service file) You can increase / decrease the Open File limit in this file  /etc/security/limits.conf by adding the following line to it :

See Sonatype Support article here.

13. (Optionally – if using a SystemD Service file like in point 11) You can increase / decrease the Open File limit in this file  /etc/systemd/system/nexus.service by modifying the following line:

See Sonatype Support article here.

14. Enable & Start the Nexus Service:

15. Nexus Repository OSS is running on port 8081, to check if it’s listening on that port run the following command:

16. Now make sure that the firewall allows connections on port 8081:

17. Take your favourite Web Browser and browse to the following URL:

You should be greeted with the Welcome Page:

Enjoy!

For a later blogpost I’m thinking to set this up behind an NGINX Proxy and then afterwards make sure my Repository is used. Stay tuned!

Update Feb 2022: It did end up using Avi (NSX-Advanced Load Balancer) for my Reverse proxy requirements. See my blog article here.

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