I installed Mepis60 (LinuxFormat DVD). I formatted the disk using existing partitions (all ext3). / was 2.2 Gb, /usr-6.6 Gb, /var-4.5 Gb, /opt-5.5 Gb, /tmp-2.5 Gb & /home-57.5 Gb. After saving a few documents, I have message: Disk full. If I check with df, / is full, others empty. However, they are listed in /etc/fstab, as /mnt/sda5...etc.
How can I activate them. In QtParted, I formatted each one and labelled them as above, but Mepis didn't 'honor' the labels, or so it seems.
Any advice appreciated.
drvitaman

SimplyMEPIS is not alone in this kind of thing. Xandros and Linspire are two other distributions that tend to make a few assumptions about what is best - and they just DO it. That is OK if all you want to do is put a distribution together quickly, and you neither know or care about the intricacies and peculiarities that you can explore within the wealth of Linux software.

I have found that a few distros, and SimplyMEPIS is one of them, seem to REWRITE the contents of /etc/fstab with their OWN idea of what it should be. Technically it ought to be possible, therefore, to find which file it READS and COPIES each time the system boots. I started to hunt quite some time ago, but it was late, I was tired, and I gave up.

If you REALLY want to use your partition scheme, find out where SimplyMEPIS hacks with the conventional Linux setup, take a copy of it, copy it into your home directory as a double copy, hack at it and try it out.

I suspect that through one of the processes associated with run level start up, SimplyMEPIS does some file copying. If it is in a program and not a readable file, it may be tougher to get around.

Anybody know the particulars? I just found this link: http://cybernightlife.50webs.com/fstab-explained.html
which seems to give the answer:

SimplyMEPIS treats the /etc/fstab slightly different from other Linux distributions. /etc/fstab is divided into two parts, one for static mounting as with other Linux distributions, the other edited by the udev and hal subsystems (the dynamic portion).

Definitions: udev and hal are subsystems for creating and removing devices that are plugged into your system at runtime. hal stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer.

The line containing "Dynamic entries below" is the division point between the static and dynamic portion of the file.

You can edit the portion above this line as I did with the line containing /dev/ipod, used for mounting and ejecting of my iPod.

However, you cannot edit lines below the division point. These lines are dynamically edited each time your SimplyMEPIS machine boots to reflect the current state of the hardware in terms of disk storage.