hi, muungwana.
I have enabled the testing section and got the 2.6.32.* kernel. A.lthough a lot of stuff cannot be installed, I can now read the disks that Mandriva 2010 produced, formatted as ext4.
That is good. The box I am doing this on is for testing, so little problems do not matter, I can transfer from the ext4 to the ext3 drives.
Many thanks for your assistance.
Gezza