[SOLVED] Maven dependencies are failing with a 501 error

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• 2 minutes to read
• Mar 23, 2022 (4 years and 5 months ago) (Updated: Sep 14, 2026)
• 12 Comments

Summary

• TL;DR
• My configuration and the error I was having, in details
• The solution
• In case you cannot use https
• Final thoughs

I have a jekins installation on my infrastructure. I found that recently my maven jobs are failing with an exception saying that they couldn’nt pull dependencies. Here is how I solved it.

TL;DR

The quick answer is that I didn’t read the warning from maven team saying that HTTPS is now required.

As of January 15, 2020 I am receiving the following responses upon making requests to The Central Repository:

Requests to http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/ return a 501 HTTPS Required status and a body:

501 HTTPS Required. Use https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/ More information at https://links.sonatype.com/central/501-https-required

Requests to http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/ return a 501 HTTPS Required status and a body:

501 HTTPS Required. Use https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/ More information at https://links.sonatype.com/central/501-https-required

I should have read that notice :p

My configuration and the error I was having, in details

I am using maven 3.6.0 on Ubuntu 18.04.

Here is the error I was getting.

[ERROR] Unresolveable build extension:
Plugin org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-ssh:2.1 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved:
Failed to collect dependencies for org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-ssh:jar:2.1 ():
Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-ssh:jar:2.1:
Could not transfer artifact org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-ssh:pom:2.1 from/to central (http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2):
Failed to transfer file: http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/apache/maven/wagon/wagon-ssh/2.1/wagon-ssh-2.1.pom.
Return code is: 501, ReasonPhrase:HTTPS Required. -> [Help 2]

Waiting for Jenkins to finish collecting data[ERROR]
Plugin org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin:2.4.1 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved:
Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin:jar:2.4.1:
Could not transfer artifact org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin:pom:2.4.1 from/to central (http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2):
Failed to transfer file: http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/apache/maven/plugins/maven-clean-plugin/2.4.1/maven-clean-plugin-2.4.1.pom.
Return code is: 501 , ReasonPhrase:HTTPS Required. -> [Help 1]

The solution

To solve this problem, I did some replacements of the maven urls in my configuration.

Replace http://repo1.maven.org/maven2 with https://repo1.maven.org/maven2 (notice the https)

Replace http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2 with https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2

In case you cannot use https

In case you cannot use the secure connection https, there is a dedicated insecure endpoint you can use :

http://insecure.repo1.maven.org/maven2

Final thoughs

I hope this article helped solving your issue on Maven dependencies are failing with a 501 error.

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