How to Change JIRA Home Directory

The 'JIRA Home Directory' contains key data that help define how JIRA works. This document describes how to specify the location of the JIRA home directory for your JIRA instance.

If JIRA was installed using the automated Windows or Linux installers, the default location of the JIRA Home Directory is:

• C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\JIRA (on Windows) or
• /var/atlassian/application-data/jira (on Linux)

How do I set my JIRA home?

There are a few methods available for specifying the location of your JIRA Home Directory in JIRA.

How do I change my JIRA home?

To change the location of your JIRA home directory,

1. Shut down JIRA.
2. Set your JIRA home to the new location, using your preferred method as described in Recommended Methods.
3. Restart JIRA.

Recommended Methods

The recommended methods for specifying the location of your JIRA Home Directory in JIRA are to:

1. Use the JIRA Configuration Tool to change the location of your JIRA Home Directory.

   Please Note

   1. The JIRA Configuration Tool requires a Java platform to be installed and configured on your operating system.

   2. The JIRA Configuration Tool is not available in JIRA WAR distributions.

   3. Whenever you configure or reconfigure JIRA's server-level settings using this tool, JIRA must be restarted so it can recognize these changes.

    

   1. Starting the JIRA Configuration Tool

      The JAVA_HOME environment variable must be set to use the JIRA configuration tool.
      
      • Windows: Open a command prompt and run config.bat in the bin sub-directory of the JIRA Installation Directory.
      • Linux/Unix: Open a console and execute config.sh in the bin sub-directory of the JIRA Installation Directory.

   2. Configuring the JIRA Home Directory

      Your JIRA Home Directory allows you to set the folder that JIRA uses to store its various data files.
      1. Click the JIRA Home tab.
      2. In the JIRA Home Directory field, type the full file path into the text field, or click the Browse button to browse for the location of your JIRA Home Directory.
      3. Click the 'Save' button. Your changes are saved to the jira-application.properties file located in the <jira-application-dir> subdirectory of your JIRA Installation Directory.
   3. Click on SAVE
      
      
2. Edit the jira-application.properties file and set the value of the 'jira.home' property to the desired location for your JIRA Home Directory (this location should be something different than the application directory, or you may run into problems later). If you are specifying this location's path on Windows, use double back-slashes ("\") between subdirectories. For example, X:\\path\\to\\JIRA\‌\Home.
   
   
3. Set an environment variable named JIRA_HOME in your operating system whose value is the location of your JIRA Home Directory. To do this:
   1. On Windows, do one of the following:
      1. Configure this environment variable through the Windows user interface (typically through 'My Computer' or 'Computer')
      2. At the command prompt, enter the following command (with your own JIRA Home path) before running JIRA from the command prompt:
         • Set JIRA_HOME=X:\path\to\JIRA\Home
           Note : Please set your JIRA_HOME  environment variable value using this format, where:
           
           • • X is the drive letter where your JIRA Home Directory is located and
             • No spacing has been added around the equal sign ('=')
      3. Specify the command above in a batch file used to start JIRA.
   2. On Linux/Solaris, do one of the following:
      1. Enter the following command at a shell/console prompt (with your own JIRA Home path) before running JIRA:
         • Export JIRA_HOME=/path/to/jira/home
      2. Specify the command above in a script used to start JIRA.
         
         
   Please Note: If you have specified different values for a 'jira.home' property in the jira-application.properties file and a JIRA_HOME environment variable, the value of the JIRA_HOME environment variable takes precedence.
   
   

4. you can specify the location of your JIRA Home Directory as property within your application server:
   Configure a new web context property called 'jira.home' for your application server. To do this, you need to define this web context property inside a <parameter/> element (as a child of the <context/> element) in your server.xml file
   The server.xml file is located within the conf subdirectory of your JIRA Installation Directory and for JIRA WAR, the jira.xml file is typically located within the conf/Catalina/localhost subdirectory of the Apache Tomcat installation running JIRA:

   <Context ...> ...   <Parameter name="jira.home" value="c:/jira/home"/> ... </Context>

   Please Note: A 'jira.home' web context property defined in your application server overrides the value of the 'jira.home' property defined in your jira-application.properties file. However, a JIRA_HOME environment variable defining your JIRA Home Directory will override either of these 'jira.home' values.