On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

: > I set up a fake disklabel in /etc/disktab, defined a filesystem in
: > /etc/fstab and mounted it and it worked! I had it set up in less
: > than 10 minutes.
:
: I didn't know you could do that. Doesn't applying the disktab label
: write to the disk?

disklabel(8) says:

     The second form of the command, with the -w flag, is used to write a
     standard label on the designated drive. [...]

     If the disk does not already have a label, the -r flag
     must be used.  In either case, the kernel's in-core label is replaced.

It sounds that if the disk is not physically labeled already, you'll get a
warning and noting will be written to the disk, but the in-core label will
be frobbed.

I have *not* verified this, however.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi & NetBSD:  Run with it.
-- CDs, Integration, Embedding, Support -- http://www.wasabisystems.com/