Installing slurm-wlm from apt gives error "adduser: The UID 64030 is already in use"

[Tim Andrews]

I get the following error when I try to install slurm-wlm. The OS tries to add a user and the ID number already exists in my LDAP domain. This user is not a local account.

It see it both when I use "--fix-broken-install", and when I don't.

$ apt --fix-broken install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  slurm-wlm-basic-plugins
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  slurm-wlm-basic-plugins
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
12 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/1,997 kB of archives.
After this operation, 7,801 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 182059 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../slurm-wlm-basic-plugins_21.08.5-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
adduser: The UID 64030 is already in use.
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/slurm-wlm-basic-plugins_21.08.5-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--unpack
):
 new slurm-wlm-basic-plugins package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/slurm-wlm-basic-plugins_21.08.5-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy

$ apt-cache policy slurm-wlm
slurm-wlm:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 21.08.5-2ubuntu1
  Version table:
     21.08.5-2ubuntu1 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 Packages

EXPECTED: I had expected the package and its dependencies to be installed.
ACTUAL: I got the error listed above, and I had to purge the slurm packages to clean it up.

[Tim Andrews (tandrew98)]

Apparently my error has been around since Xenial, per https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=851103.

UID 64030 cannot be deleted. It is in LDAP, and the account is still in use.

Is there any chance this can be fixed? Or can someone provide a workaround?

[Tim Andrews (tandrew98)]

I eventually found a workaround:
apt install libuser
luseradd -r --shell=/bin/false -M --uid=64030 slurm

Sorry for the trouble, but it would still be good if the behavior of the slurm-wlm installer can be updated, so that people do not run into this issue from now on.

Thank you