Generally, the only stupid questions are the ones not asked.

I think most of the time, updatedatabase.pl would be able to get at the appropriate Zebra configuration files, although I could envision split-server configurations where that might not be the case.  On reflection, though, reliably parsing them to figure out the suppression subfield is not a non-trivial task, since in the general case you'd have to consider both GRS-1 and DOM.

Consequently, it is probably best if the feature doesn't immediately /require/ that biblio.opacsuppressed (or whatever the column gets called) be populated right off the bat.

Regards,

Galen