touch & how labels are created

[Jorge Fábregas]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out how labels are actually created.  I know rpm have the 
smarts to consult the file_contexts file in order to assign the coorect labels 
but I was doing some test with "touch" and I have some doubts.  For example:

cd /etc
rm hosts
touch hosts

ls -lZ /etc/hosts
(it shows etc_t as its type)

If I do a restorecon of the hosts file I'll get the correct net_conf_t for the 
file.

Since I don't think "touch" is SELinux aware (because if it was it would have 
created the file with the correct label), then, who|what created the SELinux 
context on the hosts file after using touch?  Is it some low level facility 
(e.g. a system call)  that assigns the label based just on the label of the 
parent directory? If it is, why doesn't it also consult the file_contexts fie?

Thanks in advance,
Jorge