systemd service file for sonatype nexus. Put this in `$HOME/.config/systemd/user/nexus.service`. Launch with `systemctl --user start nexus`.

.gitignore

default.target.wants/
nexus

nexus.service

[Unit]
Description=Sonatype Nexus

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=%h/.local/opt/nexus/bin/jsw/linux-x86-64/nexus.pid
ExecStart=%h/.local/opt/nexus/bin/nexus start
ExecReload=%h/.local/opt/nexus/bin/nexus restart
ExecStop=%h/.local/opt/nexus/bin/nexus stop

[Install]
Alias=nexus
WantedBy=default.target

Great script. I left out the PIDFile originally and suffered for it. Without it, systemd does not realize that the service is actually starting and it immediately kills the service.

In 2.14.0-01 there's no nexus.pid there's only wrapper.. Should I use that instead?

on nexus 3.2

[Unit]
Description=nexus service
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/opt/nexus/bin/nexus start
ExecStop=/opt/nexus/bin/nexus stop
User=nexus
Restart=on-abort
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Nexus 3.6 on CentOS 7

Note that I needed to set the INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME env var, as I do not have a globally defined java in the path. Also I needed to increase the number of file descriptors, i.e. the LimitNOFILE property.

[Unit]
Description=Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/apps/nexus/current/bin/nexus start
ExecStop=/apps/nexus/current/bin/nexus stop
User=nexus
Restart=on-abort
Environment=INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME=/foo/bar/jre8
LimitNOFILE=65536

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

@Ibruun's solution is the one currently used by Sonatype at

https://help.sonatype.com/repomanager3/installation/run-as-a-service#RunasaService-systemd

But the fact that systemd still starts an (really complex) init script /apps/nexus/current/bin/nexus is jarring; that's not how it is supposed to be done....

@dtonhofer instead of ./bin/nexus start, do you think ./bin/nexus run would work with Type=simple?

@glynnforrest I don't know, you will have to try. But there is no good reason to change from the forking modus, is there?

@dtonhofer I did run it but wasn't sure if it would break nexus in some subtle way. nexus run spits the logs out to stdout so they appear in the systemd journal, which is quite handy.