The configuration file, ~/.rpmmacros replaces the usual build location, /usr/src/redhat/ with a directory to which a regular user can write.

An adequate ~/.rpmmacros is:

# ~/.rpmmacros
%packager %(echo "$USER")
%_topdir %(echo "$HOME")/rpmbuild

		

Create the ~/rpmbuild directory and several subdirectories that are not always automatically created.

mkdir ~/rpmbuild ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES ~/rpmbuild/RPMS ~/rpmbuild/BUILD