Every time I try updating my system to the new Debian stable, I end up with a system that no longer recognizes my burner and even though autofs was not updated, it is restarted and all of a sudden there's no map for it. This usually takes nothing more than updating Amarok to "stable", because libc6 must be updated. I've tried updating different programs and this is the one factor that remained the same when the autofs no maps issue cropped up. I am considering trying again. But testing the system upgrade on another partition, so I can get it right before using it on my "real" system.

Last time I made an attempt, I was able to make my burner and floppy drives visible under "computer" by adding both to the fstab file, and was even able play DVDs, CDs and floppies but the K3B burner would not recognize the burner and said hal was used to detect, but HAL was not updated -- I'm absolutely sure of this. The other burner program (Gnome Baker) would at least recognize and even named my burner, but could not burn a disk. I did update HAL afterwards, hoping to help the situation, but it improved nothing and may have made things worse. When I rebooted the next day I had no disk access whatever.

As I mentioned in the title, I believe upgrading to libc6 led to the trouble. Don't understand why. When I upgraded from old oldstable to the new old stable last year nothing bad happened. Would skipping over new "stable" libc6 and going for the new unstable work?

If I could just solve this one problem, I could easily upgrade Dreamlinux 3.5 from Debian 5.0 to 6.0.1. That's where it was when I upgraded most of the system, before recognizing there was a disk recognition and mounting problem.

Has this happened to anyone else? If so how did you solve it? Was it solvable?

Hello.
Yes this is a big thing because all basic system components (kernel,terminals, and the other libs) relay on the libc like on some other libs, too.
Think about that the system is compiled with that library.
Changing such a library means compiling the system new, from scratch, like LFS http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/ !!!
Wanting a new version of an app. can meen to must do so, or install a new distribution which includs that hot version.

So, there's no hope for an upgrade?

What you described are the symptoms of an incompatible system (version missmatches).
Yes, upgrading should only be done in an development linux tree (system like LFS).
There you can compile such new software until it relays on newer system resources.
Then you have to build a comlete new newer system.

That is the price of a dynamic linked system.

What never have to be upgrated in a system:
- kernel version (headers, libs)
- libc (glibc)
- cc (GCC)
- system tools

Sounds challenging. I have never done anything like that before, but I am definitely willing to learn. There's nothing wrong with developing a new skill set, right?

Thank you for the advice and links! I intend to put them to good use.