JBoss exception Transaction is not active: javax.transaction.RollbackException: The transaction is not active!

Sometimes you get this exception when using JBoss (5.1.0 and Seam 2.2 in my case):

14:08:17,312 WARN [arjLoggerI18N] [com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.TransactionReaper_18] - TransactionReaper::check timeout for TX -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7in state RUN 14:08:17,312 WARN [arjLoggerI18N] [com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.BasicAction_58] - Abort of action id -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 invoked while multiple threads active within it. 14:08:17,312 WARN [arjLoggerI18N] [com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.CheckedAction_2] - CheckedAction::check - atomic action -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 aborting with 1 threads active! 14:08:17,343 WARN [JDBCExceptionReporter] SQL Error: 0, SQLState: null 14:08:17,343 ERROR [JDBCExceptionReporter] Transaction is not active: tx=TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 status: ActionStatus.ABORTING >; - nested throwable: (javax.resource.ResourceException: Transaction is not active: tx=TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 status: ActionStatus.ABORTING >) 14:08:17,359 ERROR [TxPolicy] javax.ejb.EJBTransactionRolledbackException: org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: Cannot open connection 14:08:17,375 ERROR [TxPolicy] javax.ejb.EJBTransactionRolledbackException: org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: Cannot open connection 14:08:17,453 WARN [arjLoggerI18N] [com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.TransactionReaper_7] - TransactionReaper::doCancellations worker Thread[Thread-10,5,jboss] successfully canceled TX -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 14:08:17,500 WARN [arjLoggerI18N] [com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.BasicAction_40] - Abort called on already aborted atomic action -3f57fd63:6ae:4f5df31e:b7 14:08:17,515 ERROR [AsynchronousExceptionHandler] Exception thrown whilst executing asynchronous call javax.ejb.EJBTransactionRolledbackException: Transaction rolled back at org.jboss.ejb3.tx.Ejb3TxPolicy.handleEndTransactionException(Ejb3TxPolicy.java:54) at org.jboss.aspects.tx.TxPolicy.endTransaction(TxPolicy.java:175) at org.jboss.aspects.tx.TxPolicy.invokeInOurTx(TxPolicy.java:87) at org.jboss.aspects.tx.TxInterceptor$Required.invoke(TxInterceptor.java:190) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.aspects.tx.TxPropagationInterceptor.invoke(TxPropagationInterceptor.java:76) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.tx.NullInterceptor.invoke(NullInterceptor.java:42) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.security.RoleBasedAuthorizationInterceptorv2.invoke(RoleBasedAuthorizationInterceptorv2.java:201) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.security.Ejb3AuthenticationInterceptorv2.invoke(Ejb3AuthenticationInterceptorv2.java:186) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.ENCPropagationInterceptor.invoke(ENCPropagationInterceptor.java:41) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.BlockContainerShutdownInterceptor.invoke(BlockContainerShutdownInterceptor.java:67) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.aspects.currentinvocation.CurrentInvocationInterceptor.invoke(CurrentInvocationInterceptor.java:67) at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:102) at org.jboss.ejb3.session.SessionSpecContainer.invoke(SessionSpecContainer.java:176) at org.jboss.ejb3.session.SessionSpecContainer.invoke(SessionSpecContainer.java:216) at org.jboss.ejb3.proxy.impl.handler.session.SessionProxyInvocationHandlerBase.invoke(SessionProxyInvocationHandlerBase.java:207) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.jboss.seam.util.Reflections.invoke(Reflections.java:22) at org.jboss.seam.intercept.RootInvocationContext.proceed(RootInvocationContext.java:32) at org.jboss.seam.intercept.ClientSideInterceptor$1.proceed(ClientSideInterceptor.java:76) at org.jboss.seam.intercept.SeamInvocationContext.proceed(SeamInvocationContext.java:56) at org.jboss.seam.async.AsynchronousInterceptor.aroundInvoke(AsynchronousInterceptor.java:52) at org.jboss.seam.intercept.SeamInvocationContext.proceed(SeamInvocationContext.java:68) at org.jboss.seam.intercept.RootInterceptor.invoke(RootInterceptor.java:107) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.jboss.seam.util.Reflections.invoke(Reflections.java:22) at org.jboss.seam.util.Reflections.invokeAndWrap(Reflections.java:144) at org.jboss.seam.async.AsynchronousInvocation$1.process(AsynchronousInvocation.java:62) at org.jboss.seam.async.Asynchronous$ContextualAsynchronousRequest.run(Asynchronous.java:80) at org.jboss.seam.async.AsynchronousInvocation.execute(AsynchronousInvocation.java:44) at org.jboss.seam.async.QuartzDispatcher$QuartzJob.execute(QuartzDispatcher.java:243) at org.quartz.core.JobRunShell.run(JobRunShell.java:202) at org.quartz.simpl.SimpleThreadPool$WorkerThread.run(SimpleThreadPool.java:529) Caused by: javax.transaction.RollbackException: [com.arjuna.ats.internal.jta.transaction.arjunacore.inactive] [com.arjuna.ats.internal.jta.transaction.arjunacore.inactive] The transaction is not active! at com.arjuna.ats.internal.jta.transaction.arjunacore.TransactionImple.commitAndDisassociate(TransactionImple.java:1414) at com.arjuna.ats.internal.jta.transaction.arjunacore.BaseTransaction.commit(BaseTransaction.java:137) at com.arjuna.ats.jbossatx.BaseTransactionManagerDelegate.commit(BaseTransactionManagerDelegate.java:75) at org.jboss.aspects.tx.TxPolicy.endTransaction(TxPolicy.java:170) ... 47 more

For 99% sure this is caused by a timeout. Unfortunately you can't immediately see that from the exception.

The fix
Increase the timeout in transaction-jboss-beans.xml in your JBoss deploy dir. For example if you have JBoss installed in:

C:\jboss-5.1.0.GA\server\default\deploy

then open transaction-jboss-beans.xml and set the field transactionTimeout much higher. E.g at 3000 (default is 300).
In older JBoss version this setting used to be in default/conf/jboss-server.xml, see here.
The official documentation can be found here.