# Testing OpenOnDemand in no shared /home environemnt
**URL:** https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082
**Category:** Get Help
**Created:** [February 28, 2025, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082 "2025-02-28T15:50:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gp4r](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/gp4r)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2025, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082/1 "2025-02-28T15:50:23Z")
Hello, I am testing OpenOnDemand in our secure environment.
In this setup, HPC compute nodes do not have a shared home directory, and users run jobs in their project folder. (e.g., `/project/test/userid`) The project is shared between OpenOnDemand and the compute nodes.
Since OOD creates `ondemand` folder inside user’s home directory, it doesn’t work in our environment. I was wondering if there is a way to set the `$USER/ondemand` folder to a custom path `/project/test/userid`
Thank you
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### Author:  [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2025, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082/2 "2025-02-28T15:57:02Z")
Yea, you can use the environment variable `OOD_DATAROOT`.
So you could do something like this - though I don’t know where you got `test` from or if it’s a variable or what.
```shell
OOD_DATAROOT="/project/test/$USER"
```
If it is a computed variable like the primary group, you can do some extra calculations in `/etc/ood/profile` Though if you do write your own `/etc/ood/profile` you should start with the one we ship at `/opt/ood/nginx_stage/etc/profile`.
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### Author:  [@gp4r](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/gp4r)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2025, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082/3 "2025-02-28T16:13:20Z")
Thank you Jeff, yes test is primary group. Just for test I set `/project/test/$USER` in dashboard/env and restarted the server, however I got `The application encountered the following error: File exists @ dir_s_mkdir - /project (Errno::EEXIST)` Can I make OOD to ignore existing folder?
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### Author:  [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2025, 4:18pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082/4 "2025-02-28T16:18:00Z")
Not sure why you get that as /home should already exist as well. Can you tell where that’s coming from? i.e., do you have a stack trace to share?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2025, 4:18pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/testing-openondemand-in-no-shared-home-environemnt/4082/5 "2025-08-27T16:18:25Z")
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