Changing JIRA Home Directory in jira-application.properties doesn't work
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Symptoms
When you change the JIRA Home Directory in the jira-application.properties, the JIRA Home Directory is not changed and is still using the old directory.
Cause
There are 2 ways to define the JIRA Home directory for Jira
Using the
JIRA_HOMEenvironment variableUsing the
jira.homeproperty
As mentioned in the Setting your JIRA Home Directory documentation
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.
There are multiple ways to set the JIRA_HOME environment variable as well as multiple ways to set the jira.home property. Some methods to set the JIRA_HOME environment variable will override others, and likewise for setting the jira.home properties. However, the JIRA_HOMEenvironment variable will always take precedence over the jira.home property.
For example, a JIRA_HOME environment variable defined in the setenv.sh will override the JIRA_HOME environment variable defined at the shell/console prompt before running Jira. Another example is 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.
This is the order of JIRA home directory configurations according to priority
JIRA_HOME="/path/to/jira/home" (setenv.sh)
JIRA_HOME="/path/to/jira/home" (configured in your operating system)
<Parametername="jira.home"value="c:/jira/home"/> (server.xml)jira.home = /path/to/jira/home (jira-application.properties)
This means JIRA home directory configured in setenv.sh will override all other JIRA home directory configurations. JIRA home configured in the operating system will override server.xml and jira-application.properties and so on.
Resolution
If configuring jira-application.properties doesn't work, check the other configuring options which takes precedence and make sure that none of them are configured.
To check the environment configured in operating system, run the following command
Ubuntu : env
Windows: set
And make sure that the JIRA_HOME environment is not configured
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