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So when you run make it creates a programs directory in your root directory? Not within the steem directory? ... Definitely doesn't happen over here. After fixing that glitch it worked great for me. Thanks for the article btw!

/home/ubuntu/steem/programs/steemd./steemd

Yes. And you would be in /home/ubuntu/steem ... so ./programs/steemd definitely exists from that location. /programs/steemd would imply (root_dir)/programs/steemd

Therefor, yes, you meant ./programs/steemd
or cd programs then cd steemd
or cd /home/ubuntu/steem/programs/steemd (not ideal for your snippet however since people are likely installing from a more secure user directory, but that's a moot point)

But he was not starting instance to be ./something, he was entering directory with cd /programs so he did nothing wrong :)