JSR-286 Problem: setEvent(), processEvent()

Hi,
I have problems with processEvent()

I have a portlet B , loaded on startup but not visible (not displayed).
Portlet A sends an event to portlet B.
Portlet B receives it in processEvent() , does some stuff(creates a workflow with opensymphony/osworkflow) and would like to be rendered then ---but nothing happens. I do not notice that any portlet is rendered at all. Instead I see (visuall feedback from browser) that a request is pending, which times out after a while.
Creating a new request by pressing "home" interrupts the pending request and all works fine again. But I think the request is still pending somewhere.

If I don't do anything in processEvent(), the portlet get's rendered (doView()).
Sometimes (rarely) it works, although I do my stuff in processEvent() (create the workflow).
Sometimes my breakpoints in doView() are triggered, if I stop my application (Ctrl C), which brought me to the idea that I am locking something.

While stopping the application I then see following output on the console
[TomcatDeployer] undeploy, ctxPath=/pluto, warUrl=.../deploy/pluto.war/
[StandardWrapper] Waiting for 1 instance(s) to be deallocated
[StandardWrapper] Waiting for 1 instance(s) to be deallocated
[StandardWrapper] Waiting for 1 instance(s) to be deallocated
[[/pluto]] Closing Spring root WebApplicationContext

The more requests I generated, the more "Waiting ..." I see.

I am running on JBoss 4.2.2 GA

Are there some restrictions on what is allowed in processEvent()?
Could somebody please help me to isolate the problem?

Thank you for helping

Regards
Hubert

...well, it looks like it was my fault.
The thread that locked the whole thing was "com.sun.jndi.ldap.Connection".
And it locked, because I left a DirContext open in my application. Closing this solved the problem.

hub