It used to be possible for the "jobs" directory, under the Jenkins home directory, to be a symbolic link.

This worked with versions as recent as 1.444

However, as of 1.448, Jenkins startup fails with

java.io.IOException: Unable to create /var/lib/jenkins/jobs
Permission issue? Please create this directory manually.
at jenkins.model.Jenkins.loadTasks(Jenkins.java:2339)
at jenkins.model.Jenkins.<init>(Jenkins.java:735)
at hudson.model.Hudson.<init>(Hudson.java:81)
at hudson.model.Hudson.<init>(Hudson.java:77)
at hudson.WebAppMain$2.run(WebAppMain.java:217)

The Java code seems to check whether the isDirectory() method is true. This presumably returns false on a symlink. It then attempts to create a new directory and fails.