# set database location

**URL:** <https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284>\
**Category:** Feature requests\
**Created:** [July 15, 2010, 7:01pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284 "2010-07-15T19:01:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sconlan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@sconlan](https://forum.mothur.org/u/sconlan)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 7:01pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284/1 "2010-07-15T19:01:36Z")

</div>

I would like to have a central place where things like reference alignments, taxonomies, etc… can be kept. It would be great if there was place to set a default search location for such things. I see a set.dir command that handles input and output but it would be nice if you had a search\_path= or some such thing where MOTHUR would look if the specified file was not found in ./or the input directory. Bonus if it was configurable as an environment variable like $MOTHUR\_FILES. This would allow my users to have a consistent set of references without remembering/typing long paths. Perhaps such a thing exists?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laalaa99stl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@laalaa99stl](https://forum.mothur.org/u/laalaa99stl)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284/2 "2010-07-15T19:19:19Z")

</div>

+1 on this idea

Robin

(insert URL for electronic cigarettes here)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![westcott](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/forum.mothur.org/westcott/32/18_2.png) [@westcott](https://forum.mothur.org/u/westcott)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 2:40pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284/3 "2010-07-19T14:40:44Z")

</div>

Thanks for the suggestion, this will be part of version 1.12.0.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sconlan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@sconlan](https://forum.mothur.org/u/sconlan)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284/4 "2010-07-29T18:19:24Z")

</div>

Thanks for the quick implementation. One minor point. When I try it, I get an error because the directory I supplied in tempdefault is not writable (it is a data directory off of root with permissions like: drwxr-xr-x). That was how I intended to set it up so the references did not get altered. As it stands I just used chmod to add write access. In a future version it would be nice if “writability” was not a requirement. Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![westcott](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/forum.mothur.org/westcott/32/18_2.png) [@westcott](https://forum.mothur.org/u/westcott)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 1:09pm UTC](https://forum.mothur.org/t/set-database-location/284/5 "2010-07-30T13:09:57Z")

</div>

Thanks for the suggestion. We are releasing a 1.12.2 later today to fix a few issues and will include this change.