When trying to format my namenode in hadoop, I am getting the following exception, after running this command `$HADOOP_HOME/bin/hdfs namenode -format`.

> 
> 2013-11-12 13:49:48,580 FATAL namenode.NameNode
>  (NameNode.java:main(808)) - Exception in namenode join
>  java.io.IOException: Cannot create directory /test/dfs/name/current
> 
> 
> 

The fix for this, as indicated by [this link](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11315177/hadoop-java-io-ioexception-while-running-namenode-format) and [this link](https://askubuntu.com/questions/35551/error-when-formatting-the-hadoop-filesystem), is to run the command with `sudo`. I do do not have root privileges on this machine, nor can I get access to root. Is there a way to specify what directory I want to do this in, one that I have access to? I can not find where this is set in any of the xml files. I did `cat * | grep current` and other variations of parameters to grep, and I can not find where this is set. Can anyone tell me how I can change where this directory is created? I can post the `*-site.xml` if anyone wants to see them. Here is a snippet of the `hdfs-site.xml`

```
<configuration>
 <property>
   <name>dfs.name.dir</name>
   <value>/tmp/myName/hadoop-tmp/dfs/name</value>
 </property>

  <property>
   <name>dfs.namenode.name.dir</name>
   <value>/tmp/myName/hadoop-tmp/dfs/namenode</value>
 </property>
 ...
</confiuration>

```