Jenkins throwing error: jenkins.model.InvalidBuildsDir: ${ITEM_ROOTDIR}/builds does not exist and probably cannot be created
Just found a solution. After update, Jenkins home dir had a mess of files with ubuntu and jenkins owners. I just changed ownership for all of them back to jenkins:
sudo chown -R jenkins:jenkins $JENKINS_HOME
I have experienced this when the $JENKINS_HOME/jobs directory had incorrect permissions or ownership. In my specific case I had rsync'ed jobs to a test server and forgot to update file ownership to match the user Jenkins runs under on the test system. Changing ownership to the correct user resolved the issue.
There are probably a number of reasons why this error can occur, but I would start by reviewing the files and directories under $JENKINS_HOME to verify that the user running the Jenkins process can read and write to them.