[rules-users] agenda-groups

[Vincent LEGENDRE]

> I am having an issue where I have a catch all
> retraction rule setup as the lowest salience.

Not sure to understand that (note that I am not english native ...)

> I see activations created for the facts but they are never fired.  Any thoughts on why this may happen?

Send some rules. Activations never fired is just too vague to have a single answer.
If you use agenda groups, may be that the group is simply not on focus ... 
Add a first rule that set the focus, or set auto-focus for all your "low salience" rules, or don't set agenda group for them (their group will be the MAIN group).

> The session is run on a separate thread with fireAllRules called every 1/2
> second. I have tried syncronizing inserts on the session so that thread
> would not be in the middle of firing when new facts come in but that does
> not seem to do anything....

Why not using fireUntilHalt instead ?
Run your session.fireUntilHalt in a separate thread, and insert things in that session. 
insert (or update or retract) will wake up the session.

Of course, one day, you have to call halt() on your session to get out.