I found out what was happening, sort of: the thread that's creating my InitialContext just silently dies. I don't get it. The thread itself collapses. I put: InitialSystem.out.println("start"); | Context context = new InitialContext(properties); | System.out.println("done."); I see the "start" but not the "done". The thread just ends. I even replaced the "done" with System.exit(1) and that doesn't get called. This is a bug in Java itself. A thread should not just die silently like that. But aside from that I'm mystified about what to do here. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4017419#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...