# Gitea install on different working directory

**URL:** <https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390>\
**Category:** Install/Maintain/Configure\
**Created:** [June 10, 2025, 8:03am UTC](https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390 "2025-06-10T08:03:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![glenbleidd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@glenbleidd](https://forum.gitea.com/u/glenbleidd)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2025, 8:03am UTC](https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390/1 "2025-06-10T08:03:48Z")

</div>

Hello, I am trying to setup Gitea on a different partition (`/var/repo/gitea`) instead of the default (`/var/lib/gitea`) and every time I start the service it always fails at:

> **Failed to list locale files: open /var/repo/gitea/custom/options/locale: permission denied**

Then it restarts, I tried manually adding the directory, re-ran chmod and chown commands, ran restorecon on the directory but still no luck.

It works fine when set up on the default directory though I had to manually create the sub-directories needed but I cannot make it work when I try to set a different path. I followed the official Gitea documentation but only made some changes on the files where `/var/lib/gitea` is replaced by `/var/repo/gitea`

Can anybody advise? thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lunny](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.gitea.com/lunny/32/4701_2.png) [@lunny](https://forum.gitea.com/u/lunny)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 12:52am UTC](https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390/2 "2025-06-15T00:52:23Z")

</div>

> [@glenbleidd](#):
>
> /var/repo/gitea/custom/options/locale

Check the permissions of this directory.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![glenbleidd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@glenbleidd](https://forum.gitea.com/u/glenbleidd)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2025, 1:08am UTC](https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390/3 "2025-06-17T01:08:43Z")

</div>

Reran the following commands:

```auto
chown -R git:git /var/repo/gitea/
chmod -R 750 /var/repo/gitea/

```

Also did the following:

Disabled SELinux

```auto
restorecon -rv /usr/local/bin/gitea

```

Still, no luck with the same error…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lunny](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.gitea.com/lunny/32/4701_2.png) [@lunny](https://forum.gitea.com/u/lunny)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2025, 10:51pm UTC](https://forum.gitea.com/t/gitea-install-on-different-working-directory/11390/4 "2025-06-19T22:51:28Z")

</div>

> [@glenbleidd](#):
>
> /var/repo/gitea/custom/options/locale

Does the location **/var/repo/gitea/custom/options/locale** exist?