Assuming the disk device is sd1
Add a blank partition list:
fdisk -f -a -0 sd1
Create a RAID label:
disklabel -i -I /dev/rsd1d
Setup first time:
raidctl -v -i /dev/raid5 -C /etc/raid5.conf
Display status:
raidctl -m /dev/raid5 raidctl -s /dev/raid5 raidctl -S /dev/raid5
Check if parity is up to date:
raidctl -p /dev/raid5
Initialize the parity if it is known to not be up-to-date (used when after a system crash):
raidctl -P /dev/raid5
Each configuration file has four required sections, and two optional ones. They all begin with START and then the section name.
First is the array section, which defines the number of rows, columns, and spare disks.
A RAID5 array of 1 row, 4 disks and 0 spare disks
START array 1 4 0
The disks section specifies the actual devices in the RAID array:
START disks /dev/sd1a /dev/sd2a /dev/sd3a /dev/sd4a
The layout section defines sectors per stripe unit, stripe units per parity unit, stripe units per reconstruction unit, and the parity configuration to use.
This example is from the man page, for RAID5:
START layout # sectPerSU SUsPerParityUnit SUsPerReconUnit RAID_level 32 1 1 5
Final required section is queue. Again, using the man page as a reference:
START queue fifo 100