Developer Curb Appeal: Need consistent command line arguments for all nodes

Suppose you want to create a small 4 node cluster (2x2, two shards, each replicated), each on it's own machine.

It'd be nice to use the same script in /etc/init.d to start them all, but it's hard to come up with a set of arguments that works for both the first and subsequent nodes.

When MANUALLY starting them, the arguments for the first node are different than for subsequent nodes:

Node A like this:
-DzkRun -DnumShards=2 -Dbootstrap_confdir=./solr/collection1/conf -Dcollection.configName=MyConfig -jar start.jar

Vs. the other 3 nodes, B, C, D:
-DzkHost=nodeA:9983 -jar start.jar

But if you combine them, you either still have to rely on Node A being up first, and have all nodes reference it:

-DzkRun -DzkHost=nodeA:9983 -DnumShards=2 -Dbootstrap_confdir=./solr/collection1/conf -Dcollection.configName=MyConfig

OR you can try to specify the address of all 4 machines, in all 4 startup scripts, which seems logical but doesn't work:

-DzkRun -DzkHost=nodeA:9983,nodeB:9983,nodeC:9983,nodeD:9983 -DnumShards=2 -Dbootstrap_confdir=./solr/collection1/conf -Dcollection.configName=MyConfig

This gives an error:
org.apache.solr.common.SolrException log
SEVERE: null:java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: port out of range:-1

This thread suggests a possible change in syntax, but doesn't seem to work (at least with the embedded ZooKeeper)

Thread:
http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/solr4-0-problem-zkHost-with-multiple-hosts-throws-out-of-range-exception-td4014440.html

Syntax:
-DzkRun -DzkHost=nodeA:9983,nodeB:9983,nodeC:9983,nodeD:9983/solrroot -DnumShards=2 -Dbootstrap_confdir=./solr/collection1/conf -Dcollection.configName=MyConfig

Error:
SEVERE: Could not start Solr. Check solr/home property and the logs
Feb 12, 2013 1:36:49 PM org.apache.solr.common.SolrException log
SEVERE: null:java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "9983/solrroot"
at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:65)

So:

• There needs to be some syntax that all nodes can run, even if it requires listing addresses (or multicast!)
• And then clear documentation about suggesting external ZooKeeper to be used for production (list being maintained in SOLR-4444)