after many hours of cursing this debian bastardo - i finally managed to mount my new ext3 partitions in write mode - created by qtparted in knoppix - by starting knoppix in command user mode (knoppix 2). changed to root user

su root

i then mounted hda7 and hda9:

mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/hda7

i then launched kde

startx

previously i had booted knoppix default which logged me into X automatically as 'knoppix' user. i then could not write to hda7 or hda9 (permissions problem)

i hope this helps someone out there - at least it may prevent hours of frustration for someone else.

happy xmas to linuxquestions.