CentOS doesn't boot with "A stop job is running for Security Auditing Service" message

Solution 1:

The problem was in /etc/audit/auditd.conf - see man 5 auditd.conf

In the case of not enough memory (for audit logs), it was set to switch the server into the single user mode:

space_left_action = SINGLE
admin_space_left_action = SINGLE

The fix was to tweak the values of space_left and admin_space_left or to revert the original values of:

space_left_action = SYSLOG
admin_space_left_action = SUSPEND