Cannot touch; permission denied even though I am the root user?

I am trying to run Nextflow EAGER pipeline with docker on Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish. I am the only user on this computer and thus the admin. Everything I've found so far has been a chmod fix but chmod o+w benjamin is not working as it says there is not a file named benjamin. I have found some answers saying to add a line to my Nextflow config but I can't find that file. How do I fix this so the pipeline will run????

The full error is this:

Error executing process > 'makeSeqDict (HBref.fasta)'

Caused by:Process makeSeqDict (HBref.fasta) terminated with an error exit status (1)

Command executed:

picard -Xmx8192M CreateSequenceDictionary R=HBref.fasta O="HBref.dict"

Command exit status:1

Command output:(empty)

Command error:touch: cannot touch '.command.trace': Permission denied