Unexpected gmirror behavior: Is this a bug?

[Peter Steele]

> i think it's a bug but only happens with such massive mirror. very few 
>people do more than 2-way mirrors that's probably it wasn't catched. 
> 
>please do report the bug - it's critical. 

In fact I just confirmed that if we reduce our mirror to just two members the problem does not occur. The returning member, even if it is the first drive, is always re-synced with the data from the other drive and no data is lost. 

And yes, it's definitely a critical bug. I'm filing a bug report now, but we may have to fix this in-house before we can release our product with this problem. There is too great a risk for customers to lose data. 

Peter