how to locate a flash drive / identify /dev device

In Nautilus, you can specify the mount for a device.
Todo that :
Right-click on the desktop icon for your key. Go to Properties and then tab "Volume". Here under parameters you can specify a mount for that device.

You can also specify some mount options : May be you will be able to fix your automount problem with that.

Keep me posted.

Clarification, I'm using KDE and if I choose Properties for a mounted path, or for a device, I don't actually get any mount options. Is there an equivalent options somwhere in KDE.

However, normally the flash usb drive appears on my desktop without a problem when it is VFAT formatted without encryption. When encrypted it doesn't show up automatically on the desktop, I need to do a manual "pmount".

Sorry, I am not a KDE user so I won't be able to help any further :-(

pmount is no longer used in Ubuntu for automounting. Since Feisty, automounting is based on HAL.
Try googling "hal luks KDE".
One of the top result is this one for example :
Automounting LUKS encrypted volumes in KDE
http://strony.aster.pl/tanis/kde_luks/

May be you will find some leads.

I suspect that those intructions would very much solve my mount problem, I'll try it out sometime.

Though, unless that allows me to specify the mount location for a particular device (which giving it a quick read it doesn't), then my original question still stands: how to identify the device associated with a USB stick.

:(
I cannot get KDE_LUKS package is compile -- after having to install all sorts of dev files for various packages, which forced the removal of some other vital packages... Not a quest for the weary.

So, I'll give up on that route.

Though it did force me to install the libhal-dev, and there is the hal-device-manager, so I suspect I could use that library to figure out which device it is attached to...

I looked more closely to HAL.
You can do things like that :
$ hal-find-by-capability --capability volume
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_010B_3892
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_bd744be4_c49b_4a39_b353_ff20407aaf92
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_98494f22_0715_47c3_a17f_6c0af4708779
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_667369b5_e79a_45ef_bf1b_cf09e6c886be
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_a2e7dd81_09c5_4fc8_ad62_ff96ed06518f
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_part2_size_1024
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_e751918b_ba9b_415f_93b8_accc0795f998

Now you have a list all the devices (in fact their HAL ID) with capability "Volume".
The first one is my USB key :
$ lshal -l -u /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_010B_3892
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_010B_3892'
  block.device = '/dev/sdb1' (string)
  block.is_volume = true (bool)
  block.major = 8 (0x8) (int)
  block.minor = 17 (0x11) (int)
  block.storage_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_Intuix_DiskOnKey_06B183504023299B_0_0' (string)
  info.capabilities = {'volume', 'block'} (string list)
  info.category = 'volume' (string)
  info.interfaces = {'org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume'} (string list)
  info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_Intuix_DiskOnKey_06B183504023299B_0_0' (string)
  info.product = 'CLE_1GO' (string)
  info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_010B_3892' (string)
  linux.hotplug_type = 3 (0x3) (int)
  linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/block/sdb/sdb1' (string)
  org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.method_argnames = {'mount_point fstype extra_options', 'extra_options', 'extra_options'} (string list)
  org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.method_execpaths = {'hal-storage-mount', 'hal-storage-unmount', 'hal-storage-eject'} (string list)
  org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.method_names = {'Mount', 'Unmount', 'Eject'} (string list)
  org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.method_signatures = {'ssas', 'as', 'as'} (string list)
  storage.model = '' (string)
  volume.block_size = 512 (0x200) (int)
  volume.fstype = 'vfat' (string)
  volume.fsusage = 'filesystem' (string)
  volume.fsversion = 'FAT16' (string)
  volume.ignore = false (bool)
  volume.is_disc = false (bool)
  volume.is_mounted = true (bool)
  volume.is_mounted_read_only = false (bool)
  volume.is_partition = true (bool)
  volume.label = 'CLE_1GO' (string)
  volume.linux.is_device_mapper = false (bool)
  volume.mount.valid_options = {'ro', 'sync', 'dirsync', 'noatime', 'nodiratime', 'noexec', 'quiet', 'remount', 'exec', 'utf8', 'shortname=', 'codepage=', 'iocharset=', 'umask=', 'dmask=', 'fmask=', 'uid=', 'flush', 'usefree'} (string list)
  volume.mount_point = '/media/CLE_1GO' (string)
  volume.num_blocks = 2007008 (0x1e9fe0) (int)
  volume.partition.flags = {'boot'} (string list)
  volume.partition.label = '' (string)
  volume.partition.media_size = 1027604480 (0x3d400000) (uint64)
  volume.partition.number = 1 (0x1) (int)
  volume.partition.scheme = 'mbr' (string)
  volume.partition.start = 16384 (0x4000) (uint64)
  volume.partition.type = '0x0e' (string)
  volume.partition.uuid = '' (string)
  volume.size = 1027588096 (0x3d3fc000) (uint64)
  volume.unmount.valid_options = {'lazy'} (string list)
  volume.uuid = '010B-3892' (string)

So with HAL you can know when you USB key is attached or not.

And it seems that you can use the command hal-set-property (or use hal policy files) to modify the mount point and specify mount options, but I don't know how exactly...

Good luck.

volume.label looks like the good option, and then one can just do (in your case):

# hal-find-by-property --key volume.label --string CLE_1G0
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_ab4c6518_b93c_413d_92a1_5006c9c5e254

# hal-get-property --udi /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_ab4c6518_b93c_413d_92a1_5006c9c5e254 --key block.device
/dev/sdc1

The only problem is that LUKS doesn't appear to have volume labels -- they are always empty! :(
For now I'll resort to using UUID's and the volume.uuid property, though this is less than ideal since I work with multiple sticks (multiple backup copies). I'll just add them to the list.