How to change the Jenkins Home Directory from /var/lib to app and create a symlink for orginal location as job wont get affected

Question

I need to change my Jenkins 2.89.3 version Home Directory from /Var/lib/jenkins to /app due to space constraints. I need to make sure , all jobs which are using the /var/lib/jenkins directory wont get affected by this migration. how to perform this operation and ran my jenkins job as expected

Current size of /var/lib/jenkins 5.1G
Move all contents to /app/
run jenkins jobs without any issues 

Please help in this migration

Answer 1

You can use a symbolic link to do that:

1. Shutdown you Jenkins.

2. Move all files from /var/lib/jenkins to /app/jenkins

   mv /var/lib/jenkins /app/
   

3. Replace /var/lib/jenkins with a symbolic link to /app/jenkins

   ln -s /app/jenkins /var/lib/jenkins
   

4. Start Jenkins again.

That way all the files are actually stored under /app but all paths to /var/lib/jenkins stay valid due to the symbolic link.