Go-ethereum: Ethereum data directory path hardwired to C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Ethereum

[ConsentDevelopment]

System information

Geth version: 1.4.10 and below
OS & Version: Windows 10 64bit
Commit hash : (if develop)

Expected behaviour

Geth should respect the correct OS roaming path and not default to the C: drive.

Actual behaviour

Ethereum blockchain data is being written to C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Ethereum even when the OS location had moved.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

The blockchain data was taking a lot of room on my C: drive so I changed the location of the path C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming (which contains the Ethereum data folder for the blockchain data) to D:\Roaming.

When I start the wallet there is a error message that it cannot find the node and so it begins to download the whole blockchain again to the path C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Ethereum

As the blockchain will get bigger and bigger a lot of people will want to move the data folder to a bigger drive as the C drive is to small and has all the OS programs and data.

Backtrace

[backtrace]

[luclu]

Linking Mist issue:

[...] Currently geth will query the user's home directory and expands to it:

home := HomeDir()
filepath.Join(home, "AppData", "Roaming", "Ethereum")

[karalabe]

This is a known issue, but not that big since you can always manually point geth to a data directory of your choice with --datadir D:\Ethereum for example.

[ConsentDevelopment]

That is a good solution but most people will not know automatically unless they do a bit of research and people who have moved the OS roaming location will see that Geth is still using the default OS roaming location.

A lot of laptops / PCs these days have small C: SSD drives so moving the default OS roaming location will be commonplace.

[fjl]

Just noting: we have also received requests to move the chain to AppData\Local instead.

[ConsentDevelopment]

AppData\Local is also fine as long as Geth respects the OS location path of the folder.

[dattanchu]

In Ethereum Wallet app in Windows, on Install, the user can now choose the location of the chaindata.

[Cryt1c]

Is there a way to change the default datadir through config so that it persists?

[karalabe]

--datadir=your_favorite_folder

[Cryt1c]

Thanks, I know about the CLI parameter but is there a way to persist this in a config file or something comparable?

[cwallwor]

Download geth on to second drive. Move your original Ethereum to your new location on a different drive. (I put it on a different machine and mapped a drive to that location) Then you can create a link to new Ethereum location with: mklink /D C:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Ethereum G:\Ethereum Then run geth from g:\