I recently used the Debianpure CD to install a Debian base system plus
desktop environment. This install doesn't recognize and mount all of my
HD partitions. fstab only lists the new Debian partition, swap, floppy,
CD-ROM and USB thumbdrives, i.e.

<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb4 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/usb1 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdc /media/usb2 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

In addition to these, I have another dozen HD partitions (on two HD
drives) that allow me to multiboot into several other OS's. Xandros
automatically recognizes all of these on boot up and mounts them, and so
does Knoppix, Kanotix, Mepis, Libranet etc. Ubuntu, on the other hand,
behaves like Debianpure, it doesn't recognize them either.

What is the default behavior for Debian and what do I have to do to have
this straight Debian system recognize and automount all of these other
partitions?

Does this failure possibly have to do with the fact that I told the
Debian installer to put the GRUB boot loader on a floppy rather than in
the boot directory of the Debian partition (where I probably should have
put it, as I did with my other Linux OS installs, with the LILO boot
loader of Xandros residing in the MBR of my first HD and managing the
booting of all of the OS's). What would I have to do to rectify this
mistake, i.e. to put the Debian GRUB into the Debian partition, and does
it make any difference?

Robert