By default the OSGi subsystem is activated lazily. It means that the framework will not start up unless you deploy an OSGi bundle. You can activate the OSGi subsystem explicitly by setting the activation property to 'eager'
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:osgi:1.2" activation="eager">
When you start up the AS7 you should see something like this
[tdiesler@tdvaio jboss-as-7.1.0.Final]$ bin/standalone.sh ========================================================================= JBoss Bootstrap Environment JBOSS_HOME: /home/tdiesler/git/jboss-as-7.1.0.Final/build/target/jboss-as-7.1.0.Final JAVA: /usr/java/jdk1.6/bin/java JAVA_OPTS: ... ========================================================================= 13:56:32,414 INFO [org.jboss.modules] JBoss Modules version 1.1.1.GA 13:56:32,700 INFO [org.jboss.msc] JBoss MSC version 1.0.2.GA 13:56:32,802 INFO [org.jboss.as] JBAS015899: JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final "Thunder" starting ... 13:56:35,357 INFO JBossOSGi Framework Core - 1.1.5 13:56:35,628 INFO Install bundle: system.bundle:0.0.0 ... 13:56:36,007 INFO Install bundle: javax.transaction.api:0.0.0 13:56:36,009 INFO Install bundle: jboss-osgi-logging:1.0.0 13:56:36,056 INFO Install bundle: jboss-as-osgi-configadmin:7.1.0.Final 13:56:36,124 INFO Install bundle: org.apache.felix.log:1.0.0 13:56:36,191 INFO Install bundle: jbosgi-http-api:1.0.5 13:56:36,191 INFO Install bundle: org.apache.felix.configadmin:1.2.8 13:56:36,490 INFO Install bundle: osgi.enterprise:4.2.0.201003190513 13:56:36,683 INFO Starting bundles for start level: 1 13:56:36,686 INFO Bundle started: jbosgi-http-api:1.0.5 13:56:36,687 INFO Bundle started: osgi.enterprise:4.2.0.201003190513 13:56:36,705 INFO Bundle started: jboss-as-osgi-configadmin:7.1.0.Final 13:56:36,722 INFO Bundle started: jboss-osgi-logging:1.0.0 13:56:36,758 INFO Bundle started: org.apache.felix.log:1.0.0 13:56:36,760 INFO Bundle started: javax.transaction.api:0.0.0 13:56:36,797 INFO Bundle started: org.apache.felix.configadmin:1.2.8 13:56:36,813 INFO OSGi Framework started 13:56:36,836 INFO JBAS015874: JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final "Thunder" started in 4804ms