Thanks to Manuel Bouyer for the solution ... 

On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 10:11:22PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
|On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 01:15:28PM +0000, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
|> which prints out a disklabel which looks OK (ie, slice a now contains
|> the filesystem I want) and mbrlabel says it has modified the in-core
|> label, which is great, however when I try
|>
|> mount /dev/wd2a /mnt
|>
|> mount tells me that /dev/wd2a isn't available ... there is also a
|> note
|
|What does disklabel say ? It's possible that you have to keep the disk
|open so that the label isn't lost. Try something like:
|sleep 120 < /dev/rwd2d &
|before running mbrlabel

it worked, but it's bit of a kludge ... 

surely if a fictitious/in-core disklabel were created for a fixed
disk (or any disk for that matter) then it should stick around unless
explicitly cleared (ie, by direct read/write to the disklabel or by
media eject or similar)?

hmmm ... oh well ... thanks for the help

-- 
Malcolm Herbert                                This brain intentionally
mjch@mjch.net                                                left blank