Install self-hosted IQ Server

Install self-hosted IQ Server

In this section, you'll find documentation on how to install self-hosted instances of Sonatype IQ Server.

Users of Lifecycle Cloud may refer to Feature Parity with Sonatype Cloud for details of which documentation applies to their deployment.

IQ Server installation checklist

Default credentials

The default server credentials are the user admin with the password admin123

The Change Administrator Password notice will remain in the UI until the default password has been modified.

Note The standalone tarball download for IQ Server will be deprecated and removed on May 31, 2026.

Sonatype recommends using the bundle download, which supports both new installations and upgrades and includes a supported JDK.

Installation

The steps throughout the documentation refer to storing the server installation files in the server's /opt directory. You may use a different directory, however, we recommend documenting any changes in your internal notes.

Download the bundle (recommended):

Download the latest IQ Server bundle from Download and Compatibility.

The bundle supports:

If you prefer to use your own Java version, you may extract the IQ Server JAR from the bundle and run it with your preferred JDK. This is the recommended workaround for customers who require a commercial or custom JDK.

To Install the server:

  1. Create a directory for the installation and move the bundle archive into the folder:
   cd /opt
   mkdir nexus-iq-server
   mv ~/Downloads/nexus-iq-server-bundle* nexus-iq-server/
   cd nexus-iq-server
  1. From the directory, extract the bundle archive:
   unzip nexus-iq-server-bundle*.zip

See IQ Server Directory and Files for details on the installation folder contents

Initialization

Use the following command to start the IQ Server using the configuration from the Config YAML file. The output is logged to the console and errors will be recorded in the stderr.log file.

The bundle includes a supported Java runtime. Use the provided startup script to start IQ Server.

cd /opt/nexus-iq-server
./bin/nexus-iq-server server start

Note IQ Server 204 requires Java 25. If you use an external Java runtime, ensure that Java 25 is used. Customers using the bundled download can start IQ Server with the provided startup script.

Linux requires a User to start the server. See Run IQ Server as a Service for details and examples.

A successful start will result in a console message similar to the following:

... [main] org.eclipse.jetty.server.AbstractConnector - Started InstrumentedBlockingChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8070
... [main] org.eclipse.jetty.server.AbstractConnector - Started SocketConnector@0.0.0.0:8071

Java options: The start command may be modified by adding Java configuration parameters.

JAVA_OPTIONS="-Djava.util.prefs.userRoot=./sonatype-work/javaprefs -Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/tmpdir"
export JAVA_OPTIONS
./bin/nexus-iq-server server start

If you use automation

If you have automated the tarball download, update your automation to use the bundle download location.

Automatic Shutdown on Errors

In rare circumstances, unrecoverable errors may occur that lead the system to shut down to preserve a valid system state and avoid data corruption resulting from continuing in an undefined state. When the IQ server encounters a fatal java.lang.Error you will see these errors in the clm-server.log and stderr.log files listed as the following:

Exiting on fatal error, see https://help.sonatype.com/display/NXIQ/Automatic+Shutdown+on+Errors for details.

We recommend configuring the IQ server to run as a service so the service will restart automatically; avoiding a prolonged outage.

To bypass the IQ Server automatically shutting down on a fatal error, include the following property in the config.yml:

exitOnFatalError: false

Warning Administrators should not change this property unless advised by the Sonatype support team.