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