Cannot run Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager 3.0 on Windows 2012

I cannot start Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager 3.0.0 Milestone 7 Release (nexus-3.0.0-b2016011501). After unzipping the Windows archive:

then, nexus.exe /run

ERROR: Bundle com.sun.jna [5] Error starting mvn:net.java.dev.jna/jna/4.0.0 (org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Unable to resolve com.sun.jna [5](R 5.0): missing requirement [com.sun.jna [5](R 5.0)] osgi.native; (|(&(osgi.native.osname~=win32)(osgi.native.processor~=x86))(&
... ... ... ...
(osgi.native.processor~=ppc))))]
        at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.resolveBundleRevision(Felix.java:4111)
        at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.startBundle(Felix.java:2117)
        at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.setActiveStartLevel(Felix.java:1371)
        at org.apache.felix.framework.FrameworkStartLevelImpl.run(FrameworkStartLevelImpl.java:308)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Solution

An issue was opened here:

The error message means the OSGi framework (Apache Felix) hasn’t been able to match the OS and processor names to one of the available JNA native libraries.

You should be able to workaround this by adding the following line to NEXUS_HOME/etc/custom.properties

felix.native.osname.alias.windowsserver2012=windows server 2012,win32

Where “win32” is the generic alias used by Felix for any Windows OS (the processor name is then used to decide whether to install a 32 or 64 bit native library).

The credit goes to S. McCulloch for the solution, plus @manfred-moser and R. Seddon for the quick answer from Sonatype.