OBFSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT authentication problems lead to endless loop of network requests from the web client

I'm installing i2b2 for about my 3rd time and hitting this problem for the 2nd time, I think.
We're trying to use non-trivial passwords throughout our installation, and I set
the password for OBFSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT on one side (crc cell in JBOSS) and
not the other (Oracle database).

Of course, this causes the CRC cell to fail when asked to run queries.

The way that the ajax client handles this failure is really a pain: it goes into an
endless loop, counting away the tenths of a second, and sending zillions
of HTTP requests.

I haven't tracked down exactly where the bug is, but I suppose it's
somewhere in js-i2b2/cells/CRC