One way is that in your seed node subscribe to cluster membership changes and write the current set of nodes to a file. When you restart the seed node you construct the list of seed nodes from the file, and include your own address as the first element in the seed-nodes list. Then it will first try to join the other nodes, before joining itself.
The original issue #4 was resolved by a work-around. After we introduce mechanisms to persist state of agents and frontiers we can re-work the issue.
Possible solution taken from https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/akka-user/z0y1kvcY97I:
The original issue #4 was resolved by a work-around. After we introduce mechanisms to persist state of agents and frontiers we can re-work the issue.