Could anyone tell me how to get Debian Lenny to automount CDs the same as Ubuntu does i.e. automatically, with a Desktop icon etc.

I've worked out how to automount CDs using autofs, which is OK, but it still doesn't seem quite as good as the way Ubuntu does it.

Ubuntu does it using hal. Kde does it using hal, and in general, all depends on hal.

If you are on gnome 2.22 of debian stable, you will also need gnome-volume-manager to do the automounting and the "open with" procedure.
In gnome 2.24/2.26 of testing and unstable nautilus handles the automounting.

Thanks. Can anyone point me to a straightforward tutorial for this as I've not done it before and everything I've found online has been confusing.

A tutorial? I think gnome is pretty straight forward about this.

If you are on debian stable (gnome 2.22) install gnome-volume-manager and go to System > Preferences > Removable media to configure automounting.
If you are on debian testing or unstable (gnome 2.24/2.26) open a nautilus window and go to Edit > Preferences > Media to configure it. The bad thing about that new approach is that menus appear greyed out if you dont have the relevant gnome-app installed eg totem as media player.

(I may have missed something in translation from greek to english, but these are the paths you go through)

That does sound simple. But when I try to install gnome-volume-manager, Synaptic wants me to also install 46 dependencies.

I like to keep a relatively light install, so wondering if there's a way to setup automounting without gnome-volume-manager.

It installs its gnome "tools for the job" like rhythmbox, sound juicer etc.
These are noted as recommended and suggested dependencies as shown here.

I would tell apt not to install these by adding these lines in /etc/apt/apt.conf
I think they are self-explanatory...

Thanks very much, that seems to work fine.