systemd-logind.service fails to start (when attempting to return from rescue.target to graphical.target). How do I fix it?

Question

I am using Debian 8 ("jessie"). I need to run some services in maintenance mode, So changed from Graphical to rescue mode using ,

systemctl isolate rescue.target

But When I tried to move back to default mode using,

systemctl isolate graphical.target

it fails to move back with the following errors.

Syslog:

Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: Starting Login Service...
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: Failed to start Login Service.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Unit entered failed state.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Service has no hold-off time, scheduling restart.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: Stopped Login Service.
Sep 20 05:24:22 test systemd[1]: Starting Login Service...

It loops on infinitely. Am I working wrongly ? please anyone guide me on this to proceed.

Answer 1

I ended up in the same situation after restarting D-Bus daemon in Ubuntu 16.04.

I guess cycling through rescue target causes basically the same problem, a fresh D-Bus daemon is running, but somewhere in the system there is a reference to the old one.

I recovered from the login manager restart loop by "restarting" systemd

# systemctl daemon-reexec

(Note: Officially restarting D-Bus daemon is unsupported, because all D-Bus services running need to be restarted too, in order to make them register with the fresh D-Bus daemon. This needs to be done manually. Command busctl shows you all registered D-Bus services, so if you run it advance you have a list of services you need to restart.)

Answer 2

Have you tried "init 5"? I guess this would be the same as "systemctl" though. Or "runlevel 5" and restart...

In RedHat there's a configuration file you can set the default runlevel, if you can find this file and edit it. "/etc/inittab" I believe, is where you can set the default runlevel.

You can further look into "systemctl" manual page and search for "isolate" to see if there's anything useful.

Not sure if any of these helps, but these would be what I do to solve this problem.

//NOTE: This isn't a proper answer to the question, supposed to be posted as a comment, but due to the lack of Reputation, I couldn't do so. My apologies.