i was logged at root at konsole. if i wasn't wouldn't i get a command not found error? the command doesn't return anything. just drops to the prompt. no i don't share the swap partition. i just noticed that under kdiskfree, the partitions are listed as dev/sda* not sdc*. could this be the problem?
output from blkid
[root@localhost ~]# blkid /dev/sda5
/dev/sda5: TYPE="swap" UUID="163c7144-e2a4-4065-8ae4-ee60b6e15cc5"