Resync a Mongo Replica Set - mongodb

Question

I'm having a replica set, and to free some disk space, I want to resync my replica set members.
Thus, on the SECONDARY member of the replica set, I've emptied the /var/lib/mongodb/ directory which holds the data for the database.
When I open a shell to the Replication Set, and execute the command rs.status(), the following is showed.
{
"set" : "rs1",
"date" : ISODate("2016-12-13T08:28:00.414Z"),
"myState" : 5,
"term" : NumberLong(29),
"heartbeatIntervalMillis" : NumberLong(2000),
"members" : [
{
"_id" : 0,
"name" : "10.20.2.87:27017",
"health" : 1.0,
"state" : 5,
"stateStr" : "SECONDARY",
"uptime" : 148,
"optime" : {
"ts" : Timestamp(6363490787761586, 1),
"t" : NumberLong(29)
},
"optimeDate" : ISODate("2016-12-13T07:54:16.000Z"),
"infoMessage" : "could not find member to sync from",
"configVersion" : 3,
"self" : true
},
{
"_id" : 1,
"name" : "10.20.2.95:27017",
"health" : 1.0,
"state" : 1,
"stateStr" : "PRIMARY",
"uptime" : 146,
"optime" : {
"ts" : Timestamp(6363490787761586, 1),
"t" : NumberLong(29)
},
"optimeDate" : ISODate("2016-12-13T07:54:16.000Z"),
"lastHeartbeat" : ISODate("2016-12-13T08:27:58.435Z"),
"lastHeartbeatRecv" : ISODate("2016-12-13T08:27:59.447Z"),
"pingMs" : NumberLong(0),
"electionTime" : Timestamp(6363486827801739, 1),
"electionDate" : ISODate("2016-12-13T07:38:54.000Z"),
"configVersion" : 3
},
{
"_id" : 2,
"name" : "10.20.2.93:30001",
"health" : 1.0,
"state" : 7,
"stateStr" : "ARBITER",
"uptime" : 146,
"lastHeartbeat" : ISODate("2016-12-13T08:27:58.437Z"),
"lastHeartbeatRecv" : ISODate("2016-12-13T08:27:59.394Z"),
"pingMs" : NumberLong(0),
"configVersion" : 3
}
],
"ok" : 1.0
}
Why does my secondary member shows `Could not find member to sync from, however, my primary is up and running."
My collection is sharded, over 6 servers, and I have this message on 2 replica set members. The ones which have the SECONDARY member on top in the members array when requesting the replication set status.
I really would like to get rid of this error message.
It scares me :-)
Kind regards

Answer 1

I had a similar problem, and it was due to the fact that the heartbeat timeout was too short, you can solve that problem here