automount seems not to work

[CB]

On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 18:21, CB wrote:
> ... the automount doesn't seem to do anything.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> 
> 


I've realised now that I misunderstood how automount works. I assumed
that when I plugged in my USB drive, the mount point would appear. Now I
realise that the mount point only appears on demand. So far so good.

But I have another problem. I can get automount to work for /dev/sda2 (a
vfat partion), but not for /dev/sda1 (ext3). When I try to access the
mountpoint, I get the error message "no such file or directory", and the
following appears in /var/log/messages:
	localhost automount[5462]: mount(ext2): /dev/sda1: filesystem needs
repair, won't mount

If I mount /dev/sda1 manually, all is OK. I've also unmounted it and run
fsck which reported no problems with the partition.

So, 2 questions:

1. what might be causing the above error?
2. is there a way of getting the mountpoint to appear when I plug the
drive in, rather than on demand?