partition mounting problem

[Garthhh]

I allocated 40g partition [sda1] for a future dualboot, I'm guessing that because I can't resize sda6 & it has 4g of something on it that it's the active partition
I have the 10.04 iso on my active partition [desktop]
I can't mount sda1, when I run
sudo fdisk -l
df -h I notice that the mount point is *

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00026a8b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4557 36604071 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4558 19458 119685915 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19275 19458 1466368 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 4558 19090 116736291 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 19091 19274 1477948+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 8036 MB, 8036285952 bytes
248 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1020 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15376 * 512 = 7872512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000bfb92

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1

I found this which should let me do an install without having to use any outside media

[cariboo]

The * just denotes that the partition is bootable, fdisk only shows your partitions, not where the are mounted.

The reason you may not be able to mount /dev/sda1 is that it is already mount. I always use:

df -h

or

mount

to see which partitions are mount where. The mount command gives me more information then I really need so I mostly use the df command.

[Garthhh]

I'm running 8.04 & trying to get to 10.04 & haven't had good success [black screen after splash with progress bar under], doing the install on my pc then putting the HDD back in my gateway 7330gz, that has no working CD & won't boot from USB [no bios support]

when I go to places & click on it nothing
When I right click mount is one of the choices [nothing happens]
which wouldn't be there if it were already mounted, I thought?

I copy the 10.04 iso open a file browser, right click on an icon of a HDD labeled 37.5 GB media, [no paste option] which is the same size indicated on Gparted

here is the out put when I put the code you gave me in terminal

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 111G 3.5G 102G 4% /
varrun 744M 100K 744M 1% /var/run
varlock 744M 0 744M 0% /var/lock
udev 744M 52K 744M 1% /dev
devshm 744M 52K 744M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 744M 40M 705M 6% /lib/modules/2.6.24-27-generic/volatile
gvfs-fuse-daemon 111G 3.5G 102G 4% /home/garthh/.gvfs
/dev/sdb1 7.5G 827M 6.7G 11% /media/disk