Configuring Nexus Repository Manager as a Service

When installing Nexus Repository Manager Pro or Nexus Repository Manager OSS for production usage you should configure it to run as a service, so it starts back up after server reboots. It is good practice to run that service or daemon as a specific user that has only the required access rights. The following sections provide instructions for configuring the repository manager as a service or daemon on various operating systems.

Running as a Service on Linux

You can configure the repository manager to start automatically by copying the nexus script to the /etc/init.d directory. On a Linux system perform the following operations as the root user:

  1. Create a nexus user with sufficient access rights to run the service
  2. Copy $NEXUS_HOME/bin/nexus to /etc/init.d/nexus

  3. Make the /etc/init.d/nexus script executable and owned by the root user -

    chmod 755 /etc/init.d/nexus
chown root /etc/init.d/nexus
  4. Edit this script changing the following variables:
    1. Change NEXUS_HOME to the absolute folder location (e.g., NEXUS_HOME="/usr/local/nexus")
    2. Set the RUN_AS_USER to nexus or any other user with restricted rights that you want to use to run the service. You should not be running the repository manager as root.
    3. Change PIDDIR to a directory where this user has read/write permissions. In most Linux distributions, /var/run is only writable by root. The property you need to add to customize the PID file location is wrapper.pidfile. For more information about this property and how it would be configured in wrapper.conf, see: http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com/doc/english/properties.html.
  5. Change the owner and group of the directories used by the repository manager, including nexus-work configured in nexus.properties defaulting to sonatype-work/nexus, to the nexus user that will run the application.
  6. If Java is not on the default path for the user running the repository manager, add a JAVA_HOME variable which points to your local Java installation and add a $JAVA_HOME/bin to the PATH.

We recommend to avoid running the repository manager as the root user or a similar privileged user, as this practice poses serious security risks to the host operating system unnecessarily. Instead we suggest to follow system administration best practice and use a service specific user with the minimum required access rights only.

Run as a Service on Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS

This script has the appropriate chkconfig directives, so all you need to do is to add the repository manager as a service is run the following commands:

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ chkconfig --add nexus
$ chkconfig --levels 345 nexus on
$ service nexus start
Starting Nexus Repository Manager Pro...
$ tail -f /usr/local/nexus/logs/wrapper.log

The second command adds nexus as a service to be started and stopped with the service command.

chkconfig manages the symbolic links in /etc/rc[0-6].d which control the services to be started and stopped when the operating system restarts or transitions between run-levels. The third command adds nexus to run-levels 3, 4, and 5. The service command starts the repository manager, and the last command tails the wrapper.log to verify that it has been started successfully. If the repository manager has started successfully, you should see a message notifying you that it is listening for HTTP.

Runs as a Service on Ubuntu and Debian

The process for setting up the repository manager as a service on Ubuntu differs slightly from the process used on a Red Hat variant. Instead of running chkconfig, you should run the following sequence of commands once you’ve configured the startup script in /etc/init.d.

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ update-rc.d nexus defaults
$ service nexus start
Starting Nexus Repository Manager Pro...
$ tail -f /usr/local/nexus/logs/wrapper.log

Running as a Service on Mac OS X

The standard way to run a service on Mac OS X is by using launchd, which uses plist files for configuration. An example plist file for the repository manager installed in /opt is shown in this sample com.sonatype.nexus.plist file:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
    "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.sonatype.nexus</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/opt/nexus/bin/nexus</string>
        <string>start</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

After saving the file as com.sonatype.nexus.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ you have to change the ownership and access rights:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.sonatype.nexus.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.sonatype.nexus.plist

Consider setting up a different user to run the repository manager and adapt permissions and the RUN_AS_USER setting in the nexus startup script.

With this setup the repository managers, starts as a service at boot time. To manually start it after the configuration you can use:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.sonatype.nexus.plist

Running as a Service on Windows

The startup script for the repository manager on Windows platforms is bin/nexus.bat. Besides the standard commands for starting and stopping the service, it has the additional commands install and uninstall. Running these commands with elevated privileges will set up the service for you or remove it as desired. Once installed as a service with the install command, the batch file can be used to start and stop the service. In addition, the service will be available in the usual Windows service management console as a service named nexus.