Hi,

I have just about started experimenting with PCLinuxOS , and I have trouble understanding when do i need to mount a files and when not to.
I installed Linux onto a 80 GB HDD Laptop and my hardisk was partitioned so

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Boot Primary Linux ext3 8388.11
hda5 Logical Linux swap / Solaris 4193.80
hda6 Logical Linux 67444.46



while installing I chose to set / to hda1 . I now find that I have run out of space on my ext3 partition . Running df -k gives me
[root@unknown-00-05-4e-48-e3-c0 /]# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 8062888 7653248 68 100% /

Now the bit that is confusing me is the fact while using Krusader (or any other File explorer tool ) is that i can see the rest of my hard disk under /mnt/hda6 and I can still use that space ,(For eg I use that space to store my downloaded files from bittorrent) ,but whatever i download to /mnt/hda6 still is being counted as space used by / (or hda1) and filling up that filesystem.
Can someone please explain what is so ? (All file tools still show that the downloaded files are indeed under /mnt/hda6/.... structure).
I suspect I will need to mount it explicitly , but I need to understand why that is so , even when i can use that space. For sake of completeness my /etc/fstab looks like this

[root@unknown-00-05-4e-48-e3-c0 /]# cat /etc/fstab
## fstab created by Livecd-install

none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0

# /dev/hda1, size=16382961, type=131: Journalised FS: ext3 (primary)
/dev/hda1 / ext3 noatime 1 1

# /dev/hda5, size=8190945, type=130: Linux swap (extended)
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

# /dev/hda6, size=131727393, type=131: Linux native (extended)
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 ext2 user,exec,rw 0 0

# cdrom: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-822S
# /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto user,exec,ro,noauto 0 0


Thanks


ps: a follow on question after the why is answered is what do i need to do to get out of this mess such that I do not loose any data that is already downloaded to /mnt/hda6

You have hda1 mounted at / (AKA "root", meaning the top level of the directory tree). If no other partition is mounted, then any data written to a directory under / will go to /dev/hda1.
Think of mounting as "connecting"---if hda6 is not connected to /mnt/hda6, then any data written to that directory will go into /dev/hda1.

"df" will report the status of a "filesystem" on a partition, regardless of where that partition is mounted. So, what df is telling you is that /dev/hda1 is full. What does it say about /dev/hda6? (It won't report anything if hda6 is not mounted.)

the "mount" command will tell you what is actually mounted (according to your fstab, /dev/hda6 is not mounted automatically)

Once you are sure where things are, then you can change the setup. For example, you might mount /dev/hda6 to /home/data and use it as a data partition.

If you have any critical data, be sure to make a backup before you start moving things around.

It looks like you used what should have been the /boot directory for the /root directory. If you see directories like /bin,/home,/usr in the /dev/sda6 partition, then you may be able to modify your menu.lst file and the /etc/fstab file to mount /dev/sda6 as the root (/) directory. Otherwise there would be a lot more work to do copying the contents of your current root directory (except for /boot) to the /dev/sda6 partition and correcting /etc/fstab and menu.lst. It might be easier simply to reinstall.