Why ActiveMQ delivers the message 6 times before rescheduling for later redelivery?

Question

I'm using apacheMQ as queue manager. I'm using Spring's DefaultMessageListenerContainer to consume the messages. I've configured it so it has a transaction:

<bean id="jmsContainerXXX" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="myConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destination" ref="myDestination"/>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="myMessageListener" />
    <property name="concurrentConsumers" value="5"/>
    <property name="sessionTransacted" value="true" />
</bean>

I've configured ApacheMQ to have a specific redelivery policy, so if a message is not successfully processed, it gets redelivered after 1min, 5min, 25min, etc:

<redeliveryPlugin fallbackToDeadLetter="true" sendToDlqIfMaxRetriesExceeded="true">
    <redeliveryPolicyMap>
        <redeliveryPolicyMap>
            <!-- the fallback policy for all destinations -->
            <defaultEntry>
                <redeliveryPolicy maximumRedeliveries="10" 
                                  maximumRedeliveryDelay="14400000"
                                  redeliveryDelay="60000"
                                  initialRedeliveryDelay="60000" 
                                  useExponentialBackOff="true"
                                  backOffMultiplier="5"/>
            </defaultEntry>
        </redeliveryPolicyMap>
    </redeliveryPolicyMap>
</redeliveryPlugin>

Finally, in the message listener I placed a bold 'throw new RuntimeException("poum");' to be sure that the delivery fails.

And this is the result I get: - At first, ActiveMQ is delivering me the message 6 times, then it waits. - After 1 minute, ActiveMQ delivers the message 6 more times, then it waits. - After 5 minutes, ActiveMQ delivers the message 6 more times, then it waits. - etc.

My question is: why ActiveMQ delivers the message 6 times before rescheduling?

Answer 1

its one thing if you cannot deliver, its another thing when you deliver but you get an exception. http://activemq.apache.org/message-redelivery-and-dlq-handling.html

i think default poison pill value is 6? not sure on this.