on morphix live cd (kernel 2.6.9) when I plug my usb camera and type dmesg, I see that it's recognized like uba1. Unfortunately there is not uba1 in the /dev directory. I tried to mount it on sda1, but it says that there is not a valid block device sda1. when I make lsmod all the modules needed for usb mass storage are there. Any suggestions?

This may help: http://jace.seacrow.com/tech/linux/usbcam I'm not sure how morphix does it, but digital cameras aren't normally detected as normal storage devices (like /dev/sda1 for a flash drive). You should also look at the documentation for digikam: http://digikam.sourceforge.net/Digikam-SPIP/ It took me some time and reading to set up my PC to download images from my camera.

I am having a very similar and annoying problem. The camera mounts on boot, but when it is removed and plugged back it says /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device.

this problem is only in morphix and I was wondering could this be somethig specific to 2.6.9 debian kernel. I have not any problems with slackware 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.
tuxombie, I think that your problem is with the kernel too.
I had similar with 2.6.0 but with later kernels never happened.
I mount my camera with
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera
of course I have a line in fstab and the process is automated.
I think that the decision for the morphix is with mknode, but when I try to make uba1 it says that the file system is readonly and I didn't make any serious attempts to make it writable.

My camera works properly now with kernel 2.6.10. May be you could try a live cd with 2.6.10 too.