JMS Session Creation Failure

Question

In a JBOSS EAP 7.3 highly transactional application we encounter the following exception when data load increasingly.

Caused by: javax.ejb.EJBException: javax.jms.JMSException: Could not create a session: IJ000457: Unchecked throwable in managedConnectionReconnected()
Caused by: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000457: Unchecked throwable in managedConnectionReconnected() cl=org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.listener.TxConnectionListener@3915e409[state=NORMAL managed connection=org.hornetq.ra.HornetQRAManagedConnection@7d6bcd06 connection handles=0 lastUse=1494579251303 trackByTx=false pool=org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.pool.strategy.PoolByCri@691085ec mcp=SemaphoreArrayListManagedConnectionPool@66a127f5[pool=HornetQConnectionDefinition] xaResource=XAResourceWrapperImpl@56a9bb4[xaResource=org.hornetq.ra.HornetQRAXAResource@4ca920eb pad=false overrideRmValue=null productName=HornetQ productVersion=2.0 jndiName=java:/JmsXA] txSync=null]
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.AbstractConnectionManager.reconnectManagedConnection(AbstractConnectionManager.java:780)
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.AbstractConnectionManager.allocateConnection(AbstractConnectionManager.java:518)
  at org.hornetq.ra.HornetQRASessionFactoryImpl.allocateConnection(HornetQRASessionFactoryImpl.java:948)
   ... 261 more
Caused by: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000461: Could not enlist in transaction on entering meta-aware object
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.tx.TxConnectionManagerImpl.managedConnectionReconnected(TxConnectionManagerImpl.java:551)
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.AbstractConnectionManager.reconnectManagedConnection(AbstractConnectionManager.java:775)
   ... 263 more
Caused by: javax.transaction.SystemException: IJ000356: Failed to enlist: java.lang.Throwable: Unabled to enlist resource, see the previous warnings. tx=TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: 0:ffff0a0001c3:682851c6:5900737b:dd09939 status: ActionStatus.ABORT_ONLY >
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.listener.TxConnectionListener$TransactionSynchronization.checkEnlisted(TxConnectionListener.java:848)
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.listener.TxConnectionListener.enlist(TxConnectionListener.java:383)
  at org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.tx.TxConnectionManagerImpl.managedConnectionReconnected(TxConnectionManagerImpl.java:544)
   ... 264 more 

All messages are sent by an EJB using the pooled connection factory with transaction mode XA and there is also an Oracle XA database connection involved in the transaction. We are taking care to close all resources such as the connection, the session and the producer in a finally block including null checks and it does not look like we have a resource leak.

What can possibly cause this exception, can it be low disk performance to write the messaging journal?

Answer 1

This very likely caused by a transaction timeout before the EJB even tries to acquire a JMS connection. A timeout marks the transaction as "abort only" which means any work done on the transaction is essentially going to fail.

When your EJB tries to acquire a JMS connection from the JCA-managed connection pool the container will automatically try to enlist that connection in the on-going (but aborted) transaction. Since the transaction is marked as "abort only" this operation fails.

Look back through your log and you should see evidence of what caused the transaction to abort. If it was indeed a timeout you'll see something like this:

ARJUNA012095: Abort of action id 0:ffffac10040a:2eba2cc3:53ee68d4:5b013c invoked while multiple threads active within it.

Keep in mind that while it is possible to increase the transaction timeout the default timeout is already 300 seconds (ie 5 minutes) and long-running transactions are an anti-pattern and therefore discouraged.