adsal related CI tests failing (nodes not returned in call to /controller/nb/v2/switchmanager/default/nodes)

The current Lithium release candidate distributions are failing in the CI AD-SAL tests:

https://jenkins.opendaylight.org/releng/view/CSIT-1node/job/openflowplugin-csit-1node-cds-flow-services-all-stable-lithium/

these are passing with distributions coming from the stable/lithium branch

I have reproduced it locally and attached the karaf.log file for one of those reproductions.

Initial efforts to reproduce locally were not successful, but after matching the controller environment
in CI, I hit the issue:

I'm using:

https://nexus.opendaylight.org/content/repositories/automatedweeklyreleases-1074/org/opendaylight/integration/distribution-karaf/0.3.0-Lithium/distribution-karaf-0.3.0-Lithium.zip

3072m for max_mem (default is 2048m)

20MB log file (default is 1MB)

featuresRepositories = mvn:org.apache.karaf.features/standard/3.0.3/xml/features,mvn:org.apache.karaf.features/enterprise/3.0.3/xml/features,mvn:org.ops4j.pax.web/pax-web-features/3.1.4/xml/features,mvn:org.apache.karaf.features/spring/3.0.3/xml/features,mvn:org.opendaylight.integration/features-integration-index/0.3.0-Lithium/xml/features,mvn:org.opendaylight.integration/features-integration-test/0.3.0-Lithium/xml/features

featuresBoot=config,standard,region,package,kar,ssh,management,odl-integration-compatible-with-all,odl-openflowplugin-flow-services-ui,odl-openflowplugin-adsal-compatibility,odl-nsf-all

after using the above configs, I started the controller with the bin/start script. Then I saw the issue. After
reproducing once, I killed the java process and restarted with "karaf clean" and the problem remained.

again I killed the java process and then changed the max_mem back to 2048m and used "karaf clean". This time
the problem was not seen.

so, I changed back to 3072m after killing the java process, then "karaf clean" and did NOT see the issue.

finally, I killed the java process and restarted with the bin/start script and the problem was seen.

FWIW