Editing ConfluenceActionSupport.properties causes cluster shutdown

When modifying the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties on-the-fly causes

Unable to bootstrap application: Exception bootstrapping cluster:Failed to get build number from cluster.

Seems to only be related to 'clustered' version - was not able to replicate his problem on a standalone version.

Further, while debugging this:

• When modifying the confluence-init.properties file while the application is running causes the app to bring an empty page, does not kill the server though. Should we provide some form of locking to prevent modifications to critical application's files such as this one? confluence-cfg.xml etc...