% shutdown -c
...didn't work as it couldn't identify the process id to cancel. Logging out and in again a few minutes later revealed the same 2min message. Unsure what to do I read the shutdown man page which revealed that during the last 5min of scheduled shutdown, logins are prevented. This explained the symptoms. I searched the process list but there was no trace of the shutdown utility running. Googling the symptoms revealed nothing so I tried scheduling a(nother) restart (from within root terminal) with a delay of 0min to see if this would clean up / overwrite any left over/corrupt system files:
% shutdown -r now
Fortunately, this worked. I couldn't find evidence of anyone else encountering this problem, so I figured I'd note down the solution here. Essentially I've learned that if you set up a scheduled shutdown, its safest to cancel it explicitly using the shutdown -c command, instead of hoping it will cancel itself when you pull the power.
3 comments:
Security fail. Never log in as root!
Yeah, well logging in as root was the only way to fix the problem. Using sudo to shutdown on the other hand was possibly not so wise. Ah well, live and learn.
I don't think shutdown works unles you are using sudo, does it? I usually just use -now
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