Stale /var/run/nologin

[Steven P. Ulrick]

On Sat, 4 Jan 2014 19:42:16 -0600
Steven Ulrick <meow8282 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, January 4, 2014, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com>
> wrote:
> > About ten hours after a reboot, a chance attempt to log in back to
> > the
> server was rather rudely rejected with a:
> >
> > System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)
> > Connection closed by 192.168.0.2
> >
> > A quick run back to the console revealed the existence of a ten
> > hour old
> /var/run/nologin file as the culprit. Removing it put everything back
> in working order.
> 
> Two things:
> 1. You are not alone!
> 2. Thanks for the workaround...

OK...  I guess #2 was a bit premature.  I just had reason to log out of
my KDE session.  When I logged back in (or tried to), I was greeted
with the dreaded "System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)"  When my
system is in this state, I can get to a console, but it will not let me
log in.  I even tried to ssh from another system.  The other system
informs me of the following:
> > System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)

For clarification, the remote system that I am attempting to ssh FROM
is telling me that the system that I am trying to ssh INTO is in the
following state:
> > System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)

So, it appears that I have no workaround to this issue other than
rebooting...

Steven P. Ulrick