Nexus npm Proxy Fetching Metadata Externally Despite Cached Packages

post by ganesh.thirumani on Mar 7, 2025

I have a Sonatype Nexus server configured with both hosted and proxy repositories by grouping them with grouped repo for npm. The proxy repository has outbound requests disabled, and my machines do not have internet access.

• When I request a package that already exists in Nexus (either in the hosted or proxy repository), it installs successfully.
• However, when I enable outbound requests in the proxy repository, Nexus attempts to fetch metadata from external sources—even for packages that are already cached. Since my environment lacks internet access, these requests fail with connection timeouts, causing npm install failures, even though I set the maxMetadataAge and maxArtifact ages to -1.

Requirement

I need Nexus to:

1. Serve packages directly from the hosted or proxy repository if they are already available, without attempting to fetch metadata externally.
2. Only query external sources for packages that are truly missing from Nexus.

This behavior is currently blocking my setup. Any guidance on resolving this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

post by mpiggott on Mar 11, 2025

Are both the metadata and the tarball cached in Nexus? Or is only the tarball cached?

If the latter, Nexus will retrieve the metadata to identify the tarball name, even if there are no direct requests to the metadata.