Unable to enlist resource ... status: ActionStatus.ABORT_ONLY in EAP

Environment

• Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP)
  • 7
  • 6
  • 5

Issue

• I am unable to get a new database connection even though there are connections available in the xa-pool.
• When trying to get a new connection, we are seeing the following in the server.log

EAP 7/6

... javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000461: Could not enlist in transaction on entering meta-aware object
... javax.transaction.SystemException: IJ000356: Failed to enlist: java.lang.Throwable: Unabled to enlist resource, see the previous warnings. tx=TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: 0:ffffc0a8bf48:-64b3808e:5262edbc:1fb59 status: ActionStatus.ABORT_ONLY >

EAP 5

... org.jboss.resource.JBossResourceException: Could not enlist in transaction on entering meta-aware object!... 
... javax.transaction.SystemException: java.lang.Throwable: Unabled to enlist resource, see the previous warnings. tx=TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: 390e940:bdba:542df230:1adb87d status: ActionStatus.ABORT_ONLY >

Resolution

• Before accessing connections, application logic may need to check the transaction status (using isRollbackOnly())
• Transaction timeouts may need to be addressed by resolving performance issues or increasing the transaction timeout (EAP 7/6 | EAP 5)
• Failures leading to implicit transaction rollback may need to be corrected
• See also IJ000460: Error checking for a transaction : Transactions are not active

Root Cause

The error means that the transaction in which the connection request is issued has already aborted (the transaction status is ABORT_ONLY).

The root cause will be an event that occurred previously such as one of the following, for example:

• An explicit rollback of the transaction by user application code
• Timeout of the transaction by the transaction reaper due to issues such as:
  • The transaction may have run longer than expected due to poorly performing or blocking operations
  • The transaction timeout period may be set too low
  • See also EAP 7/6 timeout warnings
• Automatic/implicit rollback resulting from a previous exception:
  • Failure while starting a transaction on a specific resource (e.g. due to a stale database connection)
  • An unhandled application exception raised during transactional EJB calls in some circumstances
  • Illegal attempt to enlist multiple non-XA resources as participants in a single transaction

Diagnostic Steps

• Search the server.log for any exceptions raised in the context of the failing thread or transaction prior to the Unable to enlist failure
• Enable transaction logging (EAP 7/6 | EAP 5) to identify transaction start time and see whether they have been reaped
  • Search the server.log for the transaction ID which may be found in the Unable to enlist message - e.g. 0:ffffc0a8bf48:-64b3808e:5262edbc:1fb59)

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