i can confirm that making small change to config is necessary, else the commit is useless ...
in my case it was the secondary node which was replaced. here's what happened when trying to commit without making a change to the config:
{primary:node0}[edit]
root@ajaz# commit
node0:
commit complete
-------------------------------
And after making a change and commiting:
root@ajaz# commit
node0:
configuration check succeeds
node1:
commit complete
node0:
commit complete
Take a while to write the entire config, but when it works the feeling in awesome : )
thanks guys