How to change Jenkins default folder on Windows?

Question

How to change Jenkins default folder on Windows where Jenkins runs as Windows service. I want to change C:\Users\Coola\.jenkins folder to d:\Jenkins due to lack of space on C: partition (Every build takes ~10MB of free space). I don't want to reinstall Jenkins as Windows service. I just want to change folder of existing Jenkins instance. In case of lack of global solution I could focus only on relocating jobs folder.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

• Stop Jenkins service
• Move C:\Users\Coola\.jenkins folder to d:\Jenkins
• Using regedit, change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Jenkins\ImagePath to "d:\Jenkins\jenkins.exe"
• Start service

Answer 2

Apparently, grams' answer works but is not preferred. In Windows software and data/configuration files are supposed to reside in different places. This should be well known to Unix guys, it is basically like having a home directory. However, the wording with regard to JENKINS_HOME is broken anyways as setting an environment variable does not help despite what is being said in the help text.

I used the procedure that is described here: http://tech.nitoyon.com/en/blog/2014/02/25/jenkins-home-win/

Basically:

1. Stop Jenkins service
2. Edit entry <env name="JENKINS_HOME" value="%BASE%"/> in jenkins.xml in the Jenkins installation directory. This will be something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Jenkins. In your case value has to be set to d:\Jenkins

3. Move Files from the installation directory to the new destination, d:\Jenkins, all except (some of them may not exist in a fresh installation)

   • jre folder
   • jenkins.err.log
   • jenkins.exe
   • jenkins.exe.config
   • jenkins.out.log
   • jenkins.war
   • jenkins.war.bak
   • jenkins.war.tmp
   • jenkins.wrapper.log

   • jenkins.xml

     4. Restart the service again.

Answer 3

Here is the answer that worked for me: Jenkins: How to change JENKINS_HOME on Windows

Answer 4

When you read Administering Jenkins you can read all options how to modify the JENKINS_HOME environment variable.

On this website you can read how to configure you Tomcat container to override the JENKINS_HOME environment variable, they advise to create the file $CATALINA_BASE/conf/localhost/jenkins.xml, with the following content:

<Context docBase="../jenkins.war">
    <Environment name="JENKINS_HOME" type="java.lang.String" value="/data/jenkins" override="true"/>
</Context>

Answer 5

And in addition to grams answer, the most important part is creating an environment variable named JENKINS_HOME with value "D:\Jenkins". Without that, on starting Jenkins it would again create the .jenkins folder in your user home folder.

Answer 6

I was able to change the JENKINS_HOME variable following this http://tech.nitoyon.com/en/blog/2014/02/25/jenkins-home-win/

Setting JUST %JENKINS_HOME% as windows system wide environment variable didn't have any effect!

Answer 7

We installed by dropping the .war into Tomcat, and could set home by just setting the environment variable JENKINS_HOME (with a service restart).