Thanks all. I have manages to solve some of the problems. But now
I can't mount the Pentax camera, which behaves as a USB mass storage device.

If I do modprobe usb-storage

and then dmesg

I get

hub.c: new USB device 00:10.2-1, assigned address 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0xa17/0x6) is not claimed by any active driver
Initialising USB Mass Storage Driver...
usb.c registered new driver usb-storage
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Pentax Model: Optio S Rev 1000
Type: Direct-Access
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, chennel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 2048

And then

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/pentax

tells me that /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device


I tried sda, and sda2 (along with the change in fstab) but I get the same
thing. I don't like the last interrupt line, is that the problem?
Any ideas?

Have you switched the mode in the camera's settings from "Camera" (or similar) to "USB Mass storage" (or similar)? I've had some HP cameras and in them, at least, you can switch from the settings menu the way the camera is recognized by the computer; you should use "Camera" mode if you use some special software to get the photos off the camera, but if that's not possible you can turn it to show up as a mass storage device and treat it as one (which is a bit less intuitive than using a software tool).

I should have added that it's a 2.4.21 Kernel (SuSE 9.0)

I don't think it's the camera settings thing. It's my daughters camera,
and the manual is being sent by post.

Perhaps the "devive not claimed" bit is the clue.

I rebooted and tried again, this time

USB Mass Storage support registered.
hub.c: new USB device 00:10.2-1, assigned address 2
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Pentax Model: Optio S Rev: 1000
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1951
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 499
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 118
usb-storage: host_reset() requested but not implemented
scsi: device set offline - command error recover failed: host 1 channel 0 id 0 lun 0
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 791
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 7, driver = 00
sda : sense not available.
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 2097144
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 2

It still won't mount, but are these interrupts and I/O errors bad news?
That is, is there actually something physically wrong with the camera?