Keychain system cannot be found

Question

There are several threads on this, and on my 2009 iMac running Mavericks I ran into many of the same obstacles to the standard remedies. I had a big crash when trying to update to Yosemite a few weeks ago (so I'm back on Mavericks), with lots of permissions problems in the highly-complicated resuscitation phase. I have done a CMD-R reboot, and repaired permissions (on the password-reset utility), checked various folders including my $HOME folder with CMD-I, looked in System Preferences -> Sharing to see that I had everything set properly, and used Disk Utility also to Repair Permissions. (Maybe not in that order.)
And then, days later, for reasons unclear I began to get the "keychain system cannot be found" message. It occurred when waking the computer from sleep, finding the wi-fi disconnected and not being able to store the password. I ran Keychain First Aid. No help. I checked the Info (CMD-I) screens for my Library keychain folder and subfolders, and all looked normal.
(Disk Utility still reports lots and by "lots" I mean thousands of unnecessary ACL permissions, which it says it repairs and then they're still there.)
It's highly inconvenient as I "SSH" in to my base computer over the InterWeb, which is strangely impossible when the base is offline.
I'm not sure about adding or making new keychains - the old one apparently will be preserved although some advisors say make a manual back-up first anyway. And apparently one can import "keys" from the old keychain to make things less onerous. But I couldn't quite deduce how far that rabbit-hold might lead, so still crashed around a bit, and found ...
... that my System keychain was locked. All of the Preferences selections were "unlocked", and the other keychains (login, local, and System Roots) were unlocked.
I asked my wife what she was doing, creeping around in my keychain when I wasn't looking, but I have to say that I believed her when she professed not to know what a keychain was.
So how it got locked I don't know. I did what I often advise but equally often forget: right-clicked the System keychain. There's an option of unlock it (or to lock it if it's already unlocked).
That still didn't work, although the non-self-logging-on WiFi was my only practical problem.
So, I deleted that one key, the one for my WiFi user password.
Somewhere in there of course I rebooted (and rebooted), whether necessary or not.
And that finally worked. It's only been a few hours, but I can log off, I can reboot, the computer can sleep, and I can turn the WiFi on and off manually - and it auto-logs back in.
I wonder if I'm reporting this too early. So far, so good.
Summary: I did all the usual stuff, outlined above, suggested in multiple other threads (e.g. 10.9 Mavericks and keychain issues), except that I didn't make any new keychains, but then:
in Keychain, right-clicked the System keychain and  unlocked it;
deleted just my Wifi user-password key in the System keychain.
Hey  presto! YMMV!
Hope this helps somebody.
Charles

Answer 1

As Eric Root suggested, I'm replying to myself. Several days have passed and my repairs are holding. Here's a partial and edited "re-post":
I found that my System keychain was locked. All of the Preferences selections were "unlocked", and the other keychains (login, local, and System Roots) were unlocked.
How it got locked I don't know. I did what I often advise but equally often forget: right-clicked the System keychain. There's an option of unlock it (or to lock it if it's already unlocked).
That still didn't work, although the non-self-logging-on WiFi was my only practical problem, so, I deleted that one key, the one for my WiFi user password.
Somewhere in there of course I rebooted (and rebooted), whether necessary or not.
And that finally worked. It's only been a few days as of this writing, but I can log off, I can reboot, the computer can sleep, and I can turn the WiFi on and off manually - and it auto-logs back in.
Summary: I did all the usual stuff, outlined above, suggested in multiple other threads (e.g. 10.9 Mavericks and keychain issues), except that I didn't make any new keychains, but then:
in Keychain, right-clicked the System keychain and  unlocked it;
deleted just my Wifi user-password key in the System keychain.
Charles