How can I point Jenkins to another .jenkins home directory?

Question

I have the working /.jenkins folder under a specific user in home on Linux. I want to start Jenkins with another user, but re-use the .jenkins folder of the other user. How can I do this? Jenkins offers some instructions but I don't get it :)

score 40 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 20 '19 at 03:12

40

I think this can help you out.

Set an Environment Variable JENKINS_HOME pointing to the .jenkins folder and run the Jenkins command.

The shell should be like

export JENKINS_HOME=/usr/jhon/.jenkins

java -jar jenkins.war

The batch should be like

  SET JENKINS_HOME=C:\users\jhon\.jenkins

 java -jar jenkins.war

The Powershell should be like

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("JENKINS_HOME", "${PWD}\.jenkins")
java -jar jenkins.war

This will set your home directory to the current-working-directory + './jenkins'

edited Sep 20 '19 at 03:12

Aakash

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answered Jan 04 '13 at 06:55

Harshavardhan Konakanchi

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Thanks, that worked. I needed to run a foreground slave server on a machine that already had Jenkins and so setting the ENV var in the script just before launch worked. – djangofan Sep 13 '13 at 22:57
if the jenkins war is running on a tomcat, kill the server and restart after exporting JENKINS_HOME. – Upen Jul 21 '15 at 04:01
This will cause an error: **Unable to create the home directory ‘JENKINS_HOME’. This is most likely a permission problem.** – IgorGanapolsky Jan 27 '17 at 19:58
Using the Java option -DJENKINS_HOME=... can be even more compact – Raúl Salinas-Monteagudo May 08 '19 at 06:51

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 22 '13 at 11:21

Here are the options you have:

a) Assuming you're deploying Jenkins into Tomcat,you can do the following:

In your catalina.home/conf/localhost/jenkins.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context docBase="/home/enomad/projects/jenkins/jenkins-master/war/target/jenkins" path="" reloadable="true">
 <Environment name="JENKINS_HOME" value="/home/enomad/projects/jenkins-home"
         type="java.lang.String" override="false"/>
</Context>

b) You can export the JENKINS_HOME=toWhateveryouwant as mentioned by Harsha in the previous post

c) You can extend your JAVA_OPTS params and add -DJENKINS_HOME=/path/to/jenkins_home/ as described here: Jenkins Mailing list

Good luck!

Particularly helpful if you have to use tomcat service starters in Windows environments and need to have two Jenkins instances during migration. — Ben Steinert, Jan 26 '17 at 09:32

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 22 '16 at 07:19

2

I am using jenkins 1.639 as a war deployed on tomcat 7.0.67 . My JENKINS_HOME is set to /home/hims/jenkins

This is the entry of my setenv.sh file under /tomcat/bin directory

export CATALINA_OPTS="-DJENKINS_HOME=/home/hims/jenkins"

I hope this helps.

answered Mar 22 '16 at 07:19

Himanshu Chauhan

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Venugopal Madathil · Answer 4 · 2013-11-08T07:23:45.457

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Jenkins was not taking JENKINS_HOME env variable i set for some weird reason.

The i added this line in tomcat start up script(/etc/init.d/tomcat).

    $export JENKINS_HOME=/path/to/jenkins_home/

Now jenkins points to the new jenkins home :) This will be useful especially when you install jenkins on cloud. (on an Ec2 or eucalyptus intance)

Reference: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Tomcat

edited Nov 08 '13 at 07:23

answered Nov 08 '13 at 07:16

Venugopal Madathil

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 12 '15 at 10:35

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Or you can modify the .bashrc so that it sets the environment variable everytime you start a console, that is, if you are using bash to start Jenkins.

answered Aug 12 '15 at 10:35

xiurobert

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 04 '16 at 15:00

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In Tomcat 5 you can modify tomcat.conf and add the path:

export JAVA_OPTS="-DJENKINS_HOME=/home/jenkins"

Restart Jenkins.

answered Aug 04 '16 at 15:00

Vympel

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score 0 · Answer 7 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

0

Usually, you need to set the permissions for those files to be accessed by the new user.

See here: How to run jenkins as a different user -
especially the answers of Sagar and Peter Tran .

Cheers

edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

Community

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answered Jan 03 '13 at 12:56

Gonen

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How can I point Jenkins to another .jenkins home directory?

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