Deploying artifacts in nexus from maven gives error "Return code is: 401"?

HTTP 401 is the status code for "unauthorized", which implies that your deployment user isn't authorized to upload artifacts to that particular repository in Nexus. Log in to Nexus and give the deployment user the role(s) required to to change that snapshot repo.

It's working now. Need to edit ${MVN_HOME}/conf/settings.xml instead of /home/{user}/.m2/settings.xml