This describes on how to install a Sonatype Nexus server within an LXC-container.
Presuming LXC is already installed.
Create container type from selection out of list which is downloaded.
lxc-create -n nexus -t download
For this example debian, bookworm, amd64 is selected.
Start the container.
lxc-start -n nexus3
Make the LXC-container run at start by changing or adding the following to
the file /var/lib/lxc/nexus3/config.
# Enable auto start of this container.
lxc.start.auto = 1
# Delay start this container 30 seconds from when the host starts.
lxc.start.delay = 30
To get hold of the containers console (root) execute the following.
lxc-attach -n nexus3
Install the needed packages for easy use of commend line (bash-completion) and an editor (joe) or any other.
apt install bash-completion mc joe wget
Modifying the .bashrc for autocompletion.
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi
The Nexus service is running under user nexus and a system user named nexus and
with its primary group are created.
adduser --system nexus
addgroup --system nexus
usermod --gid nexus
Install required java version 17 runtime engine first.
apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless
Download the latest application using this download page
to get a download link.
As of the date of writing the URL and command are as follows.
mkdir download && cd download
wget "https://download.sonatype.com/nexus/3/nexus-3.76.1-01-unix.tar.gz"
Install by unpacking the downloaded nexus-3.xx.x-xx.tar.gz file into the /opt directory.
Create the directory when it does not exist yet using mkdir -p /opt.
tar xf nexus-x.x.x-xx.tar.gz -C /opt
After this a /opt/nexus-x.x.x-xx directory and the /opt/sonatype-work directory are created.
Create a /opt/nexus symlink to the /opt/nexus-x.x.x-xx directory in order to upgrade more easily
without changing the systemd to run the service.
ln -s /opt/nexus-x.x.x-xx /opt/nexus
Make nexus the owner of the /opt/sonatype-work and its content.
cown -R nexus:nexus /opt/sonatype-work
Create a file /etc/systemd/system/nexus.service containing the following content.
[Unit]
Description=nexus service
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
LimitNOFILE=65536
ExecStart=/opt/nexus/bin/nexus start
ExecStop=/opt/nexus/bin/nexus stop
User=nexus
Restart=on-abort
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Run the following commands to enable and start this new service.
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable nexus.service
systemctl start nexus.service
Check the service status to see if it is running.
systemctl --no-pager status nexus.service
Once the server is started it is started it can be accessed on port 8081.
The initial admin password is found in file /opt/sonatype-work/nexus3/admin.password
and is deleted by Nexus when the admin password is changed in the web-application.
cat /opt/sonatype-work/nexus3/admin.password
A help page of Sonatype has a download link of the latest version in different Java version flavors.
Install the appropriate Java runtime engine needed.
To upgrade to a new version unpack the downloaded .tar.gz file in a /tmp directory move
only directory /tmp/nexus-3.69.0-02 to /opt/nexus-3.69.0-02.
tar -C /tmp -xf nexus-3.69.0-02-java11-unix.tar.gz
mv /tmp/nexus-3.69.0-02 /opt/
Stop the Nexus services and update the /opt/nexus symlink to the new version directory.
Finally start the service again.
systemctl stop nexus
ln -nrsf /opt/nexus-3.69.0-02 /opt/nexus
ls -l /opt
systemctl start nexus
The application wil take some time to update the content database.
This could be minutes before the web-application responds.
Check if the service is running errorless.
systemctl --no-pager status nexus