Really truly ;) , try this with junit, and JR 1.2.2 (1.3 also does it): public void testIt() throws Exception { Repository repo = new TransientRepository(); Session sess = repo.login(new SimpleCredentials("foo", "password".toCharArray())); Node root = sess.getRootNode(); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { root.addNode( "" + i + System.currentTimeMillis(), "nt:unstructured" ); sess.save(); } Query q = sess.getWorkspace().getQueryManager().createQuery( "select * from nt:unstructured", Query.SQL); QueryResult qr = q.execute(); NodeIterator ni = qr.getNodes(); //check we get at least something back from the query assertTrue(ni.hasNext()); assertNotNull(ni.next()); assertNotNull( ni.next()); assertNotNull(ni.next()); } And start it up, try it about 10 times in a row, at least one time you will see a failure (ie it won't return anything from the query) - and then a subsequent time it just wont start, wait a few seconds, and then it will work again. Very very wierd, but somewhat relieved its not my own confused code, this is as simple as I can make it. I can only imagine there is some index sync issue still at play. Unfortunately, there is no way to wrap this up as a proper test, as it needs to startup fresh each time to reliably reproduce this (seperate JVM process each time). (and this will happen on any OS, I thought it was just linux, but have tried it on mac, windows etc).