Question

New user can't mkdir ~/go/src in Ubuntu 18.04

Posted on April 27, 2019
Ubuntu 18.04 Linux Basics
Asked by tomcampbell

Per https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-18-04 I created a new user with sudo privileges who can successully ssh in:

root@dev: adduser tom
root@dev: # Give him sudo privileges
root@dev: usermod -aG sudo tom
root@dev: # Copy keys to this account
root@dev:$ rsync --archive --chown=tom:tom ~/.ssh /home/tom

Then I exit to my local OS, and ssh back in as the new user, tom.

The only other thing I did was install Golang:

tom@dev: cd ~
tom@dev: curl -O https://dl.google.com/go/go1.12.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tom@dev: sudo tar -xvf go1.12.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local
tom@dev: sudo chown -R root:root /usr/local/go
tom@dev: # Must have used sudo on these but not sure???
tom@dev: mkdir -p $HOME/go/{bin,src}
tom@dev: nano ~/.profile
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin:/usr/local/go/bin
tom@dev: # Reload profile
tom@dev: . ~/.profile

When I go to create a new directory for a project in Go I get Permission denied:

tom@dev: mkdir ~/go/src/foo
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘foo’: Permission denied

I can do it with sudo but that’s tiring and doesn’t work right anyhow–if I try to nano main.go in the new directory I can’t save because I don’t have privileges.

What did I do wrong that my new user has sudo privileges but can’t even create file or directory without it?

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Mouhsen Ibrahim • April 28, 2019

Accepted Answer

@tomcampbell

I created a new droplet and replayed all of your commands without any errors to make sure you can create directories as normal user do this command

sudo chown -R tom:tom $HOME

To make sure tom is the owner of your home directory and all of its sub directories

Hope this helps

tomcampbell • April 29, 2019

THAT DID IT!!! Thank you, @Mohsen47! Obviously the problem line was where I gave root, which I didn’t really understand was a user and not a privilege level, permissions–not tom.

What a huge relief!

tomcampbell • April 29, 2019

Wait, but now I have another question. What is the difference between these two commands? Is that giving the user tom sudo privileges has NOTHING to do with the $HOME directory? I would assume that sudo privileges would just naturally be granted to that directory, but I’m beginning to suspect that’s nothing close to the truth.

# Give tom sudo privileges...
$ usermod -aG sudo tom

# ...but tom still can't even write to his
# own directory without this. WTF?
$ sudo chown -R tom:tom $HOME