Hi, I'm a newbie and sorry if this is obvious, I Googled and FAQed and
man'ed and found nothing.

"tapelist" has size zero. I label a tape with amlabel, and it still has
size zero, although you can tell from the date that it has been touched.
Here's a transcript: 

backup@acheloos:/etc/amanda/Daily$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw----    1 backup   backup       6416 Jul 10 18:22 amanda.conf
-rw-rw----    1 backup   backup        519 Jul  7 10:50 disklist
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 14 10:48 tapelist
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 14 10:31 tapelist.amlabel
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 11 10:54 tapelist.yesterday
backup@acheloos:/etc/amanda/Daily$ amlabel -f Daily Daily-005
rewinding, reading label Daily-005
rewinding, writing label Daily-005, checking label, done.
backup@acheloos:/etc/amanda/Daily$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw----    1 backup   backup       6416 Jul 10 18:22 amanda.conf
-rw-rw----    1 backup   backup        519 Jul  7 10:50 disklist
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 14 10:57 tapelist
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 14 10:48 tapelist.amlabel
-rw-------    1 backup   backup          0 Jul 11 10:54 tapelist.yesterday
backup@acheloos:/etc/amanda/Daily$

This is a Debian 3.0 Linux 2.2.22 i686 running the Debian-packaged
Amanda 2.4.2p2-4 with an HP DAT24.

Thanks!