Nexus Helm Proxy Fails for Newer Bitnami Charts (502 Bad Gateway)

I’m running Nexus 3.51.0-01 and have a Helm proxy repository configured to pull charts from https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami. Everything works fine for older versions of Bitnami charts (e.g., bitnami/redis:20.3.0), but when trying to fetch newer versions (20.4.0 and above), I get a 502 Bad Gateway error:

Error: failed to fetch https://nexus.cloud/repository/helm-bitnami-proxy/redis-20.4.0.tgz : 502 Bad Gateway

Nexus logs show the following error:

WARN com.sonatype.repository.helm.orient.internal.proxy.HelmProxyFacetImpl - Exception org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException checking remote for update, proxy repo helm-bitnami-proxy failed to fetch oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/redis:20.5.0, content not in cache.

It looks like newer versions of Bitnami charts are only available via OCI (oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts), while my Nexus proxy is set up for HTTP (https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami). Since Nexus doesn’t natively support Helm OCI registries via proxy, it seems like it’s failing to fetch the newer charts.

Things I’ve Tried:

  • Directly fetching the chart using helm pull oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/redis --version 20.9.0Works fine
  • Accessing the chart via Nexus proxy (helm show chart bitnami/redis --version=20.4.0) → Fails with 502
  • Checking Nexus proxy settings → Remote URL is correctly set to https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
  • Testing direct HTTP access (curl https://nexus.cloud/repository/helm-bitnami-proxy/redis-20.4.0.tgz) → Fails

Questions:

  1. Has anyone successfully configured Nexus to proxy Helm OCI registries?
  2. Is there a workaround to make Nexus fetch newer Bitnami charts?

I believe the issue described is filed as helm proxy issues · Issue #536 · sonatype/nexus-public · GitHub

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