Can Jira run without a Jira Home Directory?

[Devin Rusky]

In attempting to customize release note templates, I need to access the home directory for my company's Jira. However, the person who installed our Jira originally claims that no home directory was set on his computer.

Is it possible to have a fully functional Jira system without the home directory being located on anyone's computer or on an external server? If so, is there a way I can access those files without creating a home directory on my computer (I don't want our system to rely on my computer in any way)?

I am sure there is more information you need from me. Assuming the person who installed Jira is unable to provide any useful information, can I find the information you need on our Jira system itself (I have full admin access)?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

If you are on JIRA4+, you must need a home directory. You can find the home directory location under Administration > System Info. Or in the jira-application.properties file under atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes folder.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It may be that your previous installer is saying that the *user* that Jira runs as has no home directory on the machine, but Jira itself MUST have a home directory - it simply will not work without it. It's easy and common to say "jira home = somewhere under user's home", but a lot of people will put the home directory elsewhere for backup, performance or security purposes.

Even though older versions didn't have an explicit "home", they still needed you to give Jira some disk area to work with - it needs it for attachments and indexes at the very least.

You *must* give it some space on the server to use.