fstab setup

My Linux system runs off of a small (170 MB) hard drive. I added a larger (app. 700 MB) hard drive in order to load all the Debian packages that I would like to get. However, Dselect tells me that I don't have enough room to load the packages (which total approx. 450 MB). My first thought was

ppp failure to connect

I am having trouble connecting to my provider. I have configured the chatscript and the /etc/ppp/peers/provider files correctly, and if I run plog I see communication. the "gist" of the communication is: sent [LCPConf Req id=0x1... (IP addresses are assigned) cannot determine ethernet address