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I keep getting the following error messages in the syslog of one of my servers:

# tail /var/log/syslog

Oct 29 13:48:40 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.login1': timed out

Oct 29 13:48:40 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.login1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.login1.service'

Oct 29 13:49:05 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.login1': timed out

Oct 29 13:49:05 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.login1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.login1.service'

They seem to correlate to FTP Logins on the ProFTPd daemon:

# tail /var/log/proftpd/proftpd.log

2015-10-29 13:48:40,433 myserver proftpd[17872] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): USER switch: Login successful.

2015-10-29 13:48:40,460 myserver proftpd[17872] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): FTP session closed.

2015-10-29 13:48:40,664 myserver proftpd[17881] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): FTP session opened.

2015-10-29 13:49:05,687 myserver proftpd[17881] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): USER switch: Login successful.

2015-10-29 13:49:05,705 myserver proftpd[17881] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): FTP session closed.

2015-10-29 13:49:05,908 myserver proftpd[17915] myserver.example.com (remote.example.com[192.168.22.33]): FTP session opened.

The FTP logins themselves seem to work without problems for the user, though. I've got a couple of other servers also running ProFTPd but so far never got these errors.

They might be related to a recent upgrade from Debian 7 to Debian 8 though.

Any ideas what the message want to tell me or even what causes them?

I already tried restarting the dbus and proftpd daemons and even the server and made sure that the DBUS socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket is existing but so far the messages keep coming.

EDIT:
The output of journalctl as requested in the comment:

root@myserver:/home/chammers# systemctl status -l dbus-org.freedesktop.login1.service

● systemd-logind.service - Login Service

   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-logind.service; static)

   Active: active (running) since Tue 2015-10-27 13:23:32 CET; 1 weeks 0 days ago

     Docs: man:systemd-logind.service(8)

           man:logind.conf(5)

           http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/logind

           http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat

 Main PID: 467 (systemd-logind)

   Status: "Processing requests..."

   CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-logind.service

           └─467 /lib/systemd/systemd-logind



Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: New session c3308 of user switch.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: Removed session c3308.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: New session c3309 of user switch.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: Removed session c3309.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: New session c3310 of user switch.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: Removed session c3310.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: New session c3311 of user switch.

Oct 28 10:15:25 myserver systemd-logind[467]: Removed session c3311.

Oct 28 10:19:52 myserver systemd-logind[467]: New session 909 of user chammers.

Oct 28 10:27:11 myserver systemd-logind[467]: Failed to abandon session scope: Transport endpoint is not connected

And more journalctl output:

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.login1': timed out

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23417]: pam_systemd(proftpd:session): Failed to create session: Activation of org.freedesktop.login1 timed out

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23418]: pam_systemd(proftpd:session): Failed to create session: Activation of org.freedesktop.login1 timed out

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23417]: pam_unix(proftpd:session): session closed for user switch

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23418]: pam_unix(proftpd:session): session closed for user switch

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23420]: pam_unix(proftpd:session): session opened for user switch by (uid=0)

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver dbus[19617]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.login1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.login1.service'

Nov 03 16:21:19 myserver proftpd[23421]: pam_unix(proftpd:session): session opened for user switch by (uid=0)

Restart logind:

# systemctl restart systemd-logind

Beware that restarting dbus will break their connection again.

Reboot was the only solution that worked for me. I killed the runaway dbus process and other things failed.

This is what happened when i tried to reload httpd-

Error getting authority: Error initializing authority: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Activation of org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 timed out (g-dbus-error-quark, 20)

Failed to reload httpd.service: Connection timed out

Centos7 is buggy.

Restarting only systemd-logind service is not enough, it just postpones the main problem.

Seems like this is caused by too many files pilled up under '/run/systemd/system/', created by the service and not properly cleaned up, especially on hosts with a lot of logins. Eventually after some time you would start seeing some weird behavior like hostnamectl not reporting a thing, or timedatectl reports Failed to query server: Connection timed out and other odd things. As well the symptoms reported originally.

One workaround is to delete all 'session-*.scope' files and to restart systemd. Restarting the host is not necessary in that case.
This probably is related to a bug in systemd and dbus, hopefully in next updates they will be fixed.

I was faced with the same issue today and i found out that it was initially caused by a service eating up all available memory.
I found the related log lines, which made clear that it is caused by memory allocation in the /var/log/messages log.

systemd: Starting Session 750154 of user root.

systemd: Failed to fork: Cannot allocate memory

systemd: Assertion 'pid >= 1' failed at src/core/unit.c:1997, function unit_watch_pid(). Aborting.

systemd: Caught <ABRT>, cannot fork for core dump: Cannot allocate memory

systemd: Freezing execution.

dbus[697]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

To find out the service using most of the memory I executed this:

ps aux --sort=-%mem

To solve the issue i first tried to free the memory, but still systemd-logind was not able to start up.
Therefore I had to reboot the server and the issue was solved.

Great tips thanks! Here's the issue from DMSEG:

[   20.166678] systemd-logind[4362]: Failed to enable subscription: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

[   20.166743] systemd-logind[4362]: Failed to fully start up daemon: Input/output error

[   20.309833] systemd-logind[4400]: Failed to enable subscription: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

[   20.309886] systemd-logind[4400]: Failed to fully start up daemon: Input/output error

• systemctl restart systemd-logind did not work


• --reinstall kept failing


• ended up removing and installing systemd

root@testrack:/home/testrack# apt remove systemd

.

root@testrack:/home/testrack# apt install systemd

reboot

.

testrack@testrack:~$ systemctl daemon-reload

testrack@testrack:~$

Thanks.

Just reinstall systemd.

apt install --reinstall systemd

this resolve the issue for me on many VMs