Permission Denied To Admin User

Just installed Ubuntu 20.04 after years of using Windows, most lately Win 10.

I’m mid-way through creating a repository for MariaDB according to this procedure

     https://mariadb.com/kb/en/Creating_a_Debian_Repository/

The commands

dpkg-scanpackages binary /dev/null | gzip -9c > binary/Packages.gz
dpkg-scansources source /dev/null | gzip -9c > source/Sources.gz

evoke a response:

Permission denied

It makes no difference whether sudo is put before these commands or not.

Ideas welcome as having a repo in the apt directory will make it easier to update to newer versions of MariaDB.

At present, I’m doing the installing on my admin account and I was logged in on the appropriate password for admin while attempting making the repo.
I have a suspicion that a super-super user (called root) exists but I don’t know how to get at this account and its privileges.

This looks like a technical support request.

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