I wanted to follow up on this with what we think is the solution.
we increased the value in this Geronimo config.xml
<module name="org.apache.geronimo.configs/transaction/2.1.4/car">
<gbean name="TransactionManager">
<attribute name="defaultTransactionTimeoutSeconds">3600</attribute>
</gbean>
</module>
If we decrease that to like 15 seconds, we can reproduce the problem every time.
So, as a fix, we've increased it to a high enough value. Now, of course, the key
is to remember this so that if it happens again we'll know that we hit the new
max timeout.
Thanks!
Dave