If a transaction timeout occurs, the UserTransaction object does not get cleaned up from the thread, even after the request ends and the thread returns to the pool. Future requests will not be able to begin() a transaction, since the STATUS_ROLLEDBACK UserTransaction throws this exception:

Caused by: javax.transaction.NotSupportedException
at com.arjuna.ats.internal.jta.transaction.arjunacore.BaseTransaction.begin(BaseTransaction.java:79)
at com.arjuna.ats.jbossatx.BaseTransactionManagerDelegate.begin(BaseTransactionManagerDelegate.java:77)
at org.jboss.tm.usertx.client.ServerVMClientUserTransaction.begin(ServerVMClientUserTransaction.java:124)
at org.jboss.seam.transaction.UTTransaction.begin(UTTransaction.java:29)

This means that any transaction timeout that occurs will leave the application server in a permanently broken state and require a server restart. Hence 4.2.0.GA is currently unusable in production!

This needs to be fixed in an immediate patch release.