The Confluence Home directory is the folder where Confluence stores its configuration information, search indexes and page attachments. Confluence will fail to start if it can't find the home directory. 

Set or change the home directory

To set or change the Confluence home directory:

1. Edit <installation-directory>\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-init.properties.

2. At the bottom of the file, enter the absolute path to your <home-directory>. This tells Confluence where to find your <home-directory> when it starts up.
    

   Show me how to do this in Linux...

   You can edit the confluence.init.properties file any text editor.

   1. Scroll to the bottom of the text and find this line:

      # confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
      

   2. Remove the # and the space at the beginning of this line (so Confluence doesn't read the line as a comment) and add the absolute path to your home directory (not a symlink). For example:

      confluence.home=/var/confluence-home

   Show me how to do this in Windows...

   You can edit the confluence-init.properties file in Notepad or any other text editor.

   1. Scroll to the bottom of the text and find this line:

      # confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
      

   2. Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line (so Confluence doesn't regard the line as a comment)

      confluence.home=c:/data/confluence-home

   3. If you decide to use a different directory as the home directory you should:
      • Avoid spaces in the directory path or file name.

      • Use forward slashes '/' to define the path in this file.

Home directory location

You can specify any location on disk for your home directory. Some things to be aware of:

• You must specify an absolute path to your home directory. You can't use a symbolic link.  
• Your home directory and installation directories must be completley seperate. 
• Don't locate your home directory inside the Confluence installation directory, as the contents of this directory are removed when you upgrade Confluence. 
• If you have multiple Confluence instances on the same server, they all need their own, seperate home directory. 

Home directory permissions

Make sure your dedicated Confluence user read, write and execute permissions to the <home-directory>. 

$ chown -R confluence <home-directory>
$ chmod -R u=rwx,go=rwx <home-directory>