Does not work on Windows Server 2008 SP2 either

Ditto here - Debian Squeeze on latest Jenkins

x. java -jar jenkins.war --help doesn't list --prefix as an option.
x. Jenkins seems to completely ignore the value I place in the 'Jenkins URL' in the global config...

Turns out adding it to my /etc/default/jenkins file seems to make it work

I am encountering the same problem. I added "--prefix=/jenkins" to JENKINS_ARGS in /etc/default/jenkins
and I get the same 404 message.

fixed my own problem. I found that my mistake was that I had originally configured apache to forward from
jenkins to localhost:8180
which showed the page with broken links.
instead, after configuring the prefix, i should have forwarded from
jenkins to localhost:8180/jenkins
This explains the 404 issue because the old forwarding address goes to nowhere.
========================================
I suggest that prefix is working and that this issue should be closed.
Also, the example above seems to have a typo "prefex"

So the first reporter has a typo (prefex instead of prefix). And other reporters have made it work.
So closing as "not a defect", please reopen this issue or a new one if needed.

On Windows Server 2008 this still does not work. I’m deploying latest release of Jenkins on Windows 2008 server. Now I want to run jenkins in web context /jenkins so I in my jenkins.xml I added a prefix.
For example <arguments>-Xrs -Xmx256m -Dhudson.lifecycle=hudson.lifecycle.WindowsServiceLifecycle -jar "BASE\jenkins.war" --httpPort=8282 --ajp13Port=8283 --prefix=/jenkins</arguments>

I also tried prefix=jenkins, so without the slash. Both produce same results. There is a 404 on all paths, the old one and the new one.

I don't think it is possible to run under different web context.

I had the exact same problem. It turned out that restarting it with http://localhost:8080/restart didn't restart the daemon that reads the /etc/default/jenkins file. Doing sudo /etc/init.d/jenkins restart made it work.

After http://localhost:8080/restart it does not use prefix because only java has been restarted, not daemon:

> ps aux |grep jenkins
jenkins 5727 0.0 0.0 11996 364 ? Ss Feb21 0:00 /usr/bin/daemon --name=jenkins --inherit --env=JENKINS_HOME=/var/lib/jenkins --output=/var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log --pidfile=/var/run/jenkins/jenkins.pid – /usr/bin/java -jar /usr/share/jenkins/jenkins.war --webroot=/var/cache/jenkins/war --httpPort=8080 --ajp13Port=-1
jenkins 5728 241 7.2 1549816 280136 ? Sl 07:22 3:17 /usr/bin/java -jar /usr/share/jenkins/jenkins.war --webroot=/var/cache/jenkins/war --httpPort=8080 --ajp13Port=-1

Then restart this way:

> sudo /etc/init.d/jenkins restart

• Restarting Jenkins Continuous Integration Server jenkins [ OK ]

It now works because the deamon has been restarted:

> ps aux | grep jenkins
jenkins 5290 0.0 0.0 11996 364 ? Ss 07:25 0:00 /usr/bin/daemon --name=jenkins --inherit --env=JENKINS_HOME=/var/lib/jenkins --output=/var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log --pidfile=/var/run/jenkins/jenkins.pid – /usr/bin/java -jar /usr/share/jenkins/jenkins.war --webroot=/var/cache/jenkins/war --prefix=/jenkins --httpPort=8080 --ajp13Port=-1
jenkins 5291 152 3.7 1446928 144288 ? Sl 07:25 0:04 /usr/bin/java -jar /usr/share/jenkins/jenkins.war --webroot=/var/cache/jenkins/war --prefix=/jenkins --httpPort=8080 --ajp13Port=-1

I suggest this issue is resolved and closed.

As suggested in the latest comment, this issue is supposed to be resolved by participants.