Ep engine not handling missing file error correctly

rebalancing a third node to a cluster seems to be successful on the UI with even split of items among all three nodes.
however, looking at the nubmer of .couch files on the third node shows only 110 files instead of about 680 expected
[root@localhost default]# ls -ltr /opt/couchbase/var/lib/couchdb/default | wc
110 983 7313
beam.smp also uses 350% cpu.

logs shows and infinite loop of this error:
Info type <couch_error> 2011-07-05 13:04:08
<<"[Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:08 GMT] [error] [<0.20552.313>] MC daemon: Error opening vb 728 in <<\"default\">>:

{not_found,\n no_db_file}\n">>
Info type <couch_error> 2011-07-05 13:04:08
<<"[Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:08 GMT] [error] [<0.20551.313>] MC daemon: Error opening vb 728 in <<\"default\">>: {not_found,n no_db_file}

\n">>
ERROR REPORT emulator 2011-07-05 13:04:08
===============================================================================

Error in process <0.20604.313> on node 'ns_1@10.2.1.13' with exit value: {{nocatch,{open_db_error,<<7 bytes>>,728,

{not_found,no_db_file}}},[{mc_daemon,with_open_db,3},{mc_daemon,' -do_batch_item/6-fun-0-',7}]}


SUPERVISOR REPORT <5846.341.0> 2011-07-05 13:04:08
===============================================================================
Reporting supervisor {local,mc_conn_sup}

Child process
errorContext child_terminated
reason
{{nocatch,{open_db_error,<<"default">>,728,{not_found,no_db_file}

}},
[

{mc_daemon,with_open_db,3}

,

{mc_daemon,'-do_batch_item/6-fun-0-',7}

]}
pid <5846.20442.313>
name mc_connection
mfargs

{mc_connection,start_link,undefined}

restart_type temporary
shutdown brutal_kill
child_type worker

Info type <couch_error> 2011-07-05 13:04:08
<<"[Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:08 GMT] [error] [<0.20764.313>] MC daemon: Error opening vb 728 in <<\"default\">>:

{not_found,\n no_db_file}\n">>
Info type <couch_error> 2011-07-05 13:04:08
<<"[Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:08 GMT] [error] [<0.20690.313>] MC daemon: Error opening vb 728 in <<\"default\">>: {not_found,n no_db_file}

\n">>