I believe this is the same issue as Concurrent Requests One Invalidates The Session Results In Recursive Loop Of Session Creation (there is a JIRA) from 2009, but there was never any response.

We are running JBoss 4.2.2.GA and JBoss Seam 2.2.2.Final.

Our server will be running along fine, and suddenly we start getting calls about performance problems, and here is what I find in the log:

1098 of this:

2011-11-30 10:40:56,500 INFO  [org.jboss.seam.contexts.Contexts] starting up: org.jboss.seam.security.identity

Then this:

2011-11-30 10:40:58,343 ERROR [org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[jboss.web].[localhost].[/myapp]] Session event listener threw exception
java.lang.StackOverflowError
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620)
     at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
     at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
     at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:56)
     at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
     at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
     at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251)
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319)
     at org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent.<init>(LoggingEvent.java:154)
     at org.apache.log4j.Category.forcedLog(Category.java:388)
     at org.apache.log4j.Category.log(Category.java:853)
     at org.jboss.logging.Log4jLoggerPlugin.error(Log4jLoggerPlugin.java:206)
     at org.jboss.logging.Logger.error(Logger.java:234)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.tellNew(StandardSession.java:409)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.setId(StandardSession.java:369)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.ManagerBase.createSession(ManagerBase.java:828)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.createSession(StandardManager.java:291)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.doGetSession(Request.java:2312)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.getSession(Request.java:2075)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.RequestFacade.getSession(RequestFacade.java:833)
     at com.sun.faces.context.SessionMap.getSession(ExternalContextImpl.java:1002)

with this section repeating over 200 times:

     at com.sun.faces.el.ManagedBeanELResolver.getValue(ManagedBeanELResolver.java:72)
     at javax.el.CompositeELResolver.getValue(CompositeELResolver.java:53)
     at com.sun.faces.el.FacesCompositeELResolver.getValue(FacesCompositeELResolver.java:64)
     at org.jboss.el.parser.AstIdentifier.getValue(AstIdentifier.java:44)
     at org.jboss.el.ValueExpressionImpl.getValue(ValueExpressionImpl.java:186)
     at org.jboss.seam.core.Expressions$1.getValue(Expressions.java:111)
     at org.jboss.seam.Component$ELInitialValue.getValue(Component.java:2360)
     at org.jboss.seam.Component.initialize(Component.java:1389)
     at org.jboss.seam.Component.instantiateJavaBean(Component.java:1315)
     at org.jboss.seam.Component.instantiate(Component.java:1268)
     at org.jboss.seam.Component.newInstance(Component.java:1966)
     at org.jboss.seam.contexts.Contexts.startup(Contexts.java:304)
     at org.jboss.seam.contexts.Contexts.startup(Contexts.java:278)
     at org.jboss.seam.contexts.Lifecycle.beginSession(Lifecycle.java:191)
     at org.jboss.seam.contexts.ServletLifecycle.beginSession(ServletLifecycle.java:124)
     at org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamListener.sessionCreated(SeamListener.java:44)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.tellNew(StandardSession.java:397)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.setId(StandardSession.java:369)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.ManagerBase.createSession(ManagerBase.java:828)
     at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.createSession(StandardManager.java:291)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.doGetSession(Request.java:2312)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.getSession(Request.java:2075)
     at org.apache.catalina.connector.RequestFacade.getSession(RequestFacade.java:833)
     at com.sun.faces.context.SessionMap.getSession(ExternalContextImpl.java:1002)
     at com.sun.faces.context.SessionMap.containsKey(ExternalContextImpl.java:990)

followed by 1120 of this:

2011-11-30 10:40:58,515 INFO  [org.jboss.seam.contexts.Contexts] starting up: org.jboss.seam.web.session

Ending with a bunch of NullPointerExceptions and ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsExceptions, which I think are actually problems printing out the entire stack trace, as it doesn't seem to have a valid starting point.

This is killing us. It happened three times yesterday. It eventually recovered without having to restart the server, but it happened again today and locked up the server. I had to kill it in the middle of business hours, and then it happened AGAIN during startup!

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?