[support] copy live site to devel on home pc

[Roger]

Using Drupal 7.10 everything fully updated.
Following the drupal.org instructions I zipped the live drupal site, 
downloaded to my work pc.
Unzipped  the copy to /var/www/ which recreated the identical site on my pc.
Installed clean database of same name and password as the live database.
phpmyadmin on the live site - create the copy .sql file, copied that to 
my pc then mysql newdatabase < copy.sql to create and populate the data 
tables.

Everything worked well.
However when I browse /localhost/newsite I see the site copy error 
message: "Site under maintenance".

Copy folder has same permissions as my other drupal installs although I 
did notice that the copy originally had all root ownership, I changed to 
user ownership. permissions seem identical to other drupal 7 install.
.htaccess exists.
sites/default/settings.php exists
settings.php has no $db_url directive mentioned in the drupal.org tutorial.


I have tried loging in as user, admin using the same usernames and 
passwords as the live site but cannot get past the maintenance screen.

What did I do wrong?
How should I switch off the maintenance message?
What causes this problem and how should it be avoided in the future?

How can I log in?

Help greatly appreciated
Roger