Failed dist-upgrade of 7.1/wheezy and can't reboot/halt (sysvinit related)

[Russell Warren <russ@perspexis.com>]

I've recently done a small dist-upgrade on 7.1/wheezy that failed (https://dpaste.de/iVgQo/raw/) and I can now no longer do a reboot or halt.  When I try, I get this error:

    shutdown: timeout opening/writing control channel /run/initctl

    init: timeout opening/writing control channel /run/initctl

See this attempt at shutdown and halt: https://dpaste.de/N1tch/raw/

Is this a known issue, or does anyone know how to fix this?  I'm stumped so far.

I have not yet tried a hard shutdown since this is a remote server and I fear not being able to get access again after seeing this bug report while researching possible solutions:

https://bugzilla.openvz.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2657