How does changing the location of the configuration file work?

Support
1

I’d like to change the location of Syncthing’s configuration file. There are a couple of questions about this on the forum, but the only direct answer is a terse “syncthing -home /new/directory” without enough information for me to tell exactly what that does.

In trying to deduce it based on what’s in the documentation, I presume there must be some place under the hood where Syncthing records where to look for its database and config file. So, if I want to change those, do I

  1. Run $ syncthing -home /new/directory once as a configuration command to tell Syncthing to edit what’s under the hood to record the new location of its config & data directory, or
  2. Run $ syncthing -home /new/directory every time I issue a Syncthing command, now and forever into the future?

In the case of 2), I’m guessing that Syncthing has the default locations for its config & data directory hard-coded, and that those can’t be changed in general.

In conceptual terms, my question is, is syncthing -home /new/directory a “start the server, but with special parameters” command, or is it a “alter the internal state without doing anything to the server” command?

2

Alternative two, or set the corresponding env var.

3

Some Syncthing options, including these below, need to be used at startup to work, unless you set them as environment variables.

See Command Line Operation — Syncthing documentation and scroll down to Common Options:

–home=, -H ($STHOMEDIR)

Set common configuration and data directory. The default configuration directory is $XDG_STATE_HOME/syncthing or $HOME/.local/state/syncthing (Unix-like), $HOME/Library/Application Support/Syncthing (Mac) and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Syncthing (Windows).

–config=, -C ($STCONFDIR)

Set configuration directory. Alternative to --home and must be used together with --data.

–data=, -D ($STDATADIR)

Set data (e.g. database) directory. Alternative to --home and must be used together with --config.

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4

OK, thanks!