Your command should not be pointing to an existing directory to be used as your working directory.
First, you were pointing to your /home (Please don’t do this!)
Now, you’re pointing to your root home directory (Again. Please don’t do this).
Anytime you build anything, you should always create a <new> directory so your project will “live” in its own unique location, not to be disturbed by anything else on your system and not to disturb anything else on your system.
If you don’t understand what I just stated… PLEASE ask for clarification, it’s one of those fundamental things you have to understand before embarking on anything like Kiwi or software development.
So,
First step should be to create a directory, and as long as you know where it is and it’s brand new the location can be almost anywhere.
If you run the following command as your regular User (not elevated by sudo or su), it will create a subdirectory of your Documents folder called “MyProject” After running the following, I’d recommend if necessary using PCManFM or Dolphin or whatever your graphical file manager might be to open this location so you understand what was just done and where the location is.
mkdir ~/Documents/MyProject
After the above, your “prepare” statement should be something like the following, substituting your own User account for “User”
kiwi --prepare <source> root=/home/User/MyProject
Next step is to configure a source for the image you’re creating, and so far you haven’t described what you’re using for your source. You can use the available Kiwi template images (my general recommendation). Or, you can mount an ISO on a loop. Or, you can point to an existing system (eg if you’ve built a working example of what you want to replicate) but I’d recommend you not try this until you’ve gotten the basics down first with something simpler (like a template).
The following SUSE documentation describes step by step a couple ways of mounting an ISO to a loop device (for a local repository) and importing a set of templates(The following describes coping an entire file tree of templates to an easy to use location, but other ways are possible, too)
https://www.suse.com/documentation/sled11/book_sle_deployment/data/sec_kiwi_creating.html
A couple more online references that might be useful
Kiwi system prepare
https://suse.github.io/kiwi/commands/system_prepare.html
I’ve strongly recommended using a config.xml file instead of running “kiwi --prepare” and “kiwi --create” commands. Using a config.xml file forces you to configure all that’s necessary in a file which should also hopefully make it easier to understand what you’re configuring
https://www.suse.com/documentation/slepos11/book_slepos/data/cha_slepos_kiwi_sle11.html
HTH,
TSU