Change the PDI Home Directory Location
The default location for the Pentaho Data Integration home directory is the .kettle directory in your system user's home directory.
- Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\example_user\.kettle
- Linux: ~/.kettle)
There will be a different .kettle directory, and therefore a different set of configuration files, for each system user that runs PDI.
The contents of this directory are listed in the following table:
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
| kettle.properties | Main PDI properties file; contains global variables for low-level PDI settings |
| shared.xml | Shared objects file |
| db.cache | The database cache for metadata |
| repositories.xml | Connection details for PDI database or solution repositories |
| .spoonrc | User interface settings, including the last opened transformation/job |
| .languageChoice | Default language for the PDI client tool |
Standalone PDI client tool deployments
You can specify a single, universal .kettle directory for all users by declaring a KETTLE_HOME environment variable in your operating system. When declaring the variable, leave out the .kettle portion of it; this is automatically added by PDI.
export KETTLE_HOME=/home/pentaho/examplepath/pdi
Pentaho Server deployments that run PDI content
If you followed a manual deployment or archive package installation path, you can set a system environment variable as explained above, but it must be declared before the Pentaho Server service starts. You can alternatively change the CATALINA_OPTS system variable to include the -D flag for KETTLE_HOME, or you can edit the script that runs the Pentaho Server and set the flag inline, as in this example from the start-pentaho.sh script:
export CATALINA_OPTS="--Xms2048m -Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -Dsun.rmi.dgc.client.gcInterval=3600000 -Dsun.rmi.dgc.server.gcInterval=3600000" -DKETTLE_HOME=/home/pentaho/examplepath/pdi
Windows service modification
If you used the graphical utility to install the Pentaho Server, then you must modify the Java options flag that runs the Pentaho Server Tomcat service. Here is an example command that will change the value of KETTLE_HOME to C:\<examplepath>\pdi\.kettle:
tomcat8.exe //US//pentahobiserver ++JvmOptions -DKETTLE_HOME=C:\examplepath\pdi