Vinum quirks? ...on simple raid5 setup

[Gerald]

I'm trying to do what I think is a very simple raid5 vinum setup. If there
is a better list to post this too, please direct me.

<IBM DDRS-34560D DC1B>             at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,da0)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (pass1,da1)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus0 target 2 lun 0 (pass2,da2)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus0 target 3 lun 0 (pass3,da3)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,da4)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus1 target 1 lun 0 (pass5,da5)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus1 target 2 lun 0 (pass6,da6)
<IBM DDRS-39130D DC1B>             at scbus1 target 3 lun 0 (pass7,da7)

The OS (4.9-RELEASE) is completely on da0. I want to take da1-da7 and
make it a raid 5 disk that I can use as temporary space for my backup
program.

I create the vinum raid with this config file:

drive a device /dev/da1s1e
drive b device /dev/da2s1e
drive c device /dev/da3s1e
drive d device /dev/da4s1e
drive e device /dev/da5s1e
drive f device /dev/da6s1e
drive g device /dev/da7s1e
volume data
         plex org raid5 52284M
                 sd length 8714M drive a
                 sd length 8714M drive b
                 sd length 8714M drive c
                 sd length 8714M drive d
                 sd length 8714M drive e
                 sd length 8714M drive f
                 sd length 8714M drive g

All of the drives can be mounted/newfs'ed individually so they all seem
to be working independent of vinum. I then initialize the plex with "vinum init data.p0"
and after a while of initializing it gets to this list which seems perfect:

7 drives:
D a                     State: up       Device /dev/da1s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D b                     State: up       Device /dev/da2s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D c                     State: up       Device /dev/da3s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D d                     State: up       Device /dev/da4s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D e                     State: up       Device /dev/da5s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D f                     State: up       Device /dev/da6s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D g                     State: up       Device /dev/da7s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)

1 volumes:
V data                  State: up       Plexes:       1 Size:         51 GB

1 plexes:
P data.p0            R5 State: up       Subdisks:     7 Size:         51 GB

7 subdisks:
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 010827264  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 021654528  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 62485504  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 51658240  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 59169024  B Size:       8714 MB
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO: 769996288  B Size:       8714 MB

This is where the fun starts. The first attempt at newfs'ing
/dev/vinum/data resulted in a kernel panic that froze the server up
until I could reboot it. Reading the documentation further I saw I was
supposed to use newfs -v, but kernel panic seems excessive. My mistake
nonetheless. Second run at newfs'ing it when I got back to the list
above resulted in a reboot. This seems odd now. I check when it reboots
and the list has changed to this:

7 drives:
D a                     State: up       Device /dev/da1s1e      Avail: 0/8714 MB (0%)
D b                     State: up       Device /dev/da2s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)
D c                     State: up       Device /dev/da3s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)
D d                     State: up       Device /dev/da4s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)
D e                     State: up       Device /dev/da5s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)
D f                     State: up       Device /dev/da6s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)
D g                     State: up       Device /dev/da7s1e      Avail: 8714/8714 MB (100%)

1 volumes:
V data                  State: up       Plexes:       1 Size:          0  B

1 plexes:
P data.p0            R5 State: up       Subdisks:     1 Size:          0  B

1 subdisks:
S data.p0.s0            State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       8714 MB

I wiped the config completely, and tried to set it up again and just reboot
without newfs'ing it and it again reverts to the config above. What am I
missing? I'm going to set it up as striped just to see if I can use it, but I was
hoping to drop the one drive in favor of redundancy.

Thanks in advance for suggestions related to this.

Gerald