Weird problem with debian

[struggle4progress]

Recently noticed a weird problem with my debian install: it wouldn't automount usb drives. Got weird error messages. Didn't notice before since I hadn't stuck in a flashdrive since the install. Manual mounting through the terminal ( mount -t <filesystem> <device> <mountpoint> ) worked fine.

Not sure I've tracked it all down, but horrendous googling revealed another person who'd had a similar problem after usb install on a similar machine: debian squeeze didn't remove/replace a temporary version of /etc/fstab. My fstab declared /dev/sdb1 was a cdrom (corresponding to the live cd iso, I suppose). So I commented out that fstab line and the machine is happy with usb drives