It's an Xorg message we see in the log, not x-gdm-session (that's just the logging daemon, which happens to start X for us) The log is produced in the file ./hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/systemd-logind.c if (dbus_message_is_signal(message, "org.freedesktop.DBus", "NameOwnerChanged")) { char *name, *old_owner, *new_owner; dbus_message_get_args(message, &error, DBUS_TYPE_STRING, &name, DBUS_TYPE_STRING, &old_owner, DBUS_TYPE_STRING, &new_owner, DBUS_TYPE_INVALID); if (dbus_error_is_set(&error)) { LogMessage(X_ERROR, "systemd-logind: NameOwnerChanged: %s\n", error.message); dbus_error_free(&error); return DBUS_HANDLER_RESULT_NOT_YET_HANDLED; } if (name && strcmp(name, "org.freedesktop.login1") == 0) FatalError("systemd-logind disappeared (stopped/restarted?)\n"); return DBUS_HANDLER_RESULT_NOT_YET_HANDLED;