PAM Issues

Modules

nologin

The pam_nologin module prevents users from logging in to the system. Login is refused if a file /etc/nologin or /var/run/nologin exists. The contents of the file will be visible to any users that attempt to login and can be used to display the reason why the system is down.

Troubleshooting

Cannot Login : System is booting up

If you get the following message when trying to log in:

System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)

The quick fix is to remove the nologin file so that authentication will go through.

# cat /var/run/nologin
"System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)"
# rm /var/run/nologin

I'm still trying to find a real solution to this issue though. Why is this file being made and why isn't it being removed?

There were no log entries when the file was created, but a few minutes before its creation, /var/log/messages had a bunch of these:

/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:42:38 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:43:08 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:43:08 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:03 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:03 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:16 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:16 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:17 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:17 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration
/var/log/messages-20170521:May 17 03:44:21 mr1 dbus-daemon[1314]: [session uid=988 pid=1314] Reloaded configuration