Guides / Artifact & Container Registries

How to Install & Set Up Nexus Repository OSS

Run Sonatype Nexus Repository OSS — a universal artifact manager for Maven, npm, Docker, and more — the fast way with Docker.

Updated 20264-step setupDownload Nexus Repository OSS →

Prerequisites

✓A host with 4 GB+ RAM and Java 8/11 (bundled in the Docker image)
✓Docker (for the container method)

Run Nexus with Docker

terminal

docker volume create nexus-data
docker run -d -p 8081:8081 --name nexus \
  -v nexus-data:/nexus-data \
  sonatype/nexus3

Retrieve the admin password

Nexus generates a one-time admin password on first boot.

terminal

docker exec nexus cat /nexus-data/admin.password

Alternative — run without Docker (bundled JRE tarball)

Sonatype doesn't publish native apt/dnf packages, but the tarball download bundles its own Java runtime, so it drops onto RHEL or Ubuntu identically — no distro-specific step.

terminal

curl -LO https://download.sonatype.com/nexus/3/latest-unix.tar.gz
tar xzf latest-unix.tar.gz
sudo useradd --system --create-home --home-dir /opt/nexus nexus
sudo chown -R nexus: nexus-3* sonatype-work
sudo -u nexus ./nexus-3*/bin/nexus start

The admin password from this install method lands in sonatype-work/nexus3/admin.password instead of the Docker path above.