Hi Everybody,

This is a question I probably shouldn't be asking this far into my Linux learning, but I am confused about a permissions problem I am having. I know that adding ".." before a command applies the command to the next higher directory. However, if someone could explain the exact layout of this command:

bob:mnt/sdb2$ mkdir -v ../utilities

When I type this command (as per some instructions I am following), I get "Permission Denied"

Just where am I attempting to put the directory? I need to get a clear understanding of this to continue the project I am doing because I am running into this problem at every turn.

Any help would be greatly appeciated.

Bob

Lets say your current directory is /mount/something/somewhere, issuing the command above should create the directory /mount/something/utilities. The .. in this case would be /mount/something.

Thank you for your response, and that is exactly what I assumed it to be. However, what I am actually doing is trying to create a Linux from Scratch which required a new user to be created to mount the partition I am installing to, aliased $LFS, and there are several directories I have had to create to unpack/configure/install various packages to. As it stands, I am trying to install the first package which requires the host systems (Slackware) C-compiler to build the package and I am getting permissions errors:

I know this question could be asked in LFS forum, but it is more to do with basic Linux than LFS. I have attempted this three times now, following the instructions to the letter, and all three attempts have resulted in this.

If you have any ideas I would be greatful.

Thanks,

Bob

Well, the obvious questions are, who are you doing this as (I'm assuming not root because of the $ at the end of your prompt), what are the permissions of /mnt, and who owns /mnt. I've never done LFS, but that is what you'll need to look.

Hi, thank you for your response. The difficulty I am having is understanding why certain instructed commands do not follow the norm...i.e:

The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../glibc-build
cd ../glibc-build

This directory is created as above. After unpacking the bz2 file, obviously a new directory for the unzipped has been created: Glibc-2.3.4. So, I now have a top directory of Glibc-build and a directory below that called Glibc-2.3.4.

Now the instructions say this:

However, when this command is run (assuming the configure command is going to be run in the dedicate directory one above (Glibc-build), I get this:

Error: You must run configure in a separate build director

I am missing something, but I cannot figure out what..

Thanks for your help.

Again, this is not something that I've ever done before, but almost looks like their tree would have the glibc-build and glibc-2.3.4 under the same directory. So, if you were to build this under /usr (I have no real idea), then you would have a /usr/glibc-bulid and /usr/glibc-2.3.4 directories, and the command would be run from the /usr/glibc-build directory.

And looking out at the TLDP it would appear that you should unzip the bz2 file in a directory, then make the build directory, change to the build directory, then run the configure file in glibc-2.3.4 from the build directory.

I have no idea why it would be that way short of not wanting to over-write something in the source directory.

Thanks--I have given this one up for the time being. I tried it a fews days ago and got pretty far with it, but had some errors and decided to wipe the partition and start again. This time, however, it is like my computer is having none of it.

So, I think I will regroup, study a little more, and try again another time.

Thank you for your help.

Bob