I have an IDE HD that a friend formatted using RHL.  It's
got lots of data on it that I'd rather not lose, and which
I'm not in a position to back up.

I am using the NetBSD ext2fs support to use the disk.  The
wd driver, though, keeps complaining that the disk has no
disklabel.  The disk *does* have a partition table that
the kernel is picking up just fine.  In fact, I can mount
and use the drive with no problem.  If I add it to fstab,
however, at reboot the system gets very unhappy with the
drive and drops into single-user mode.

So I figure that I need to add a label.

Running disklabel -i -I wd1, as suggested by disklabel(8),
comes up with the correct partition table.  When I ask it
to write the label to the disk, though, it says:

$ disklabel -i -I wd1
partition> P
8 partitions:
#        size    offset     fstype  [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]
 d: 240121728         0     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 238215)
 e:   4195233        63 Linux Ext2      0     0         # (Cyl.    0*- 4161)
 f: 235926432   4195296 Linux Ext2      0     0         # (Cyl. 4162 - 238215)
partition> W
Label disk [n]? y
Erase the previous contents of the disk? [n]:
$ disklabel -r wd1
disklabel: no disklabel
$

Do I have to say "y" to the second question?  I don't
want to erase the contents of the disk.

$ disklabel -i -I -r wd1

has the same (lack of) effect.

  Alan