new to VPS self-hosting, trouble installing software

[yoti 0]

I’m attempting to to install Nextcloud on a VPS Ubuntu server using Cloudpanel. as I was following the official Nextcloud installation doc by Cloudpanel and had to navigate to the directory ~/tmp, I noticed that I see no directories at all in my server.

root@vmi1808444:~# cd ~/tmp
-bash: cd: /root/tmp: No such file or directory

when I run the ls command in the home directory, it’s practically empty which doesn’t make sense because Cloudpanel is already running on the server and is perfectly accessible, which means that I should be able see its installation files.

root@vmi1808444:~# ls
update.txt

root@vmi1808444:~# ls -a
.  ..  .bash_history  .bashrc  .cache  .config  .local  .profile  update.txt

it's quite different to when I run ls in my Linux machine home directory, I get all the OS folders and config files of the installed programmes...

any advice? is it possible that I don’t have a permission to see these directories from my VPS provider?

Edited April 15 by yoti
self hosting, VPS, nextcloud, cloudpanel, server, linux, ubuntu, setup, installation