Ticket 9703

(In reply to Josko Plazonic from comment #0)
> Good morning,
> 
> we need to rename an account and we would prefer to actually rename rather
> than create new and move users. As far as we can tell there is no way to do
> it but it also does not seem to be too hard to do by hand. As in stop
> slurmdbd and run a bunch of update commands.
> 
> Do you have any recommendations/scripts/ways to do this? Or is this a NO,
> DON'T DO IT?
> 
> Thanks!

Hi Josko,

Unfortunately you cannot rename an account. The primary key of the account is the name and this field is used in all other database tables as a referral. You should modify the all the tables of Slurm database to reflect the change, which is quite complex and not supported at all.

MariaDB [slurm_acct_db_2002]> desc acct_table;
+---------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field         | Type                | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| creation_time | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| mod_time      | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   |     | 0       |       |
| deleted       | tinyint(4)          | YES  |     | 0       |       |
| name          | tinytext            | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| description   | text                | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| organization  | text                | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
+---------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Then all jobs in ctld cache will also have been submitted with the old account name, which would be problematic.

The sacctmgr command already denies this:

]$ sacctmgr modify account foo set name=bar
 Can't modify the name of an account

Note also slurm.conf should be adapted, e.g. if using AllowAccounts (or similar) on a partition.

Old accounting data would also be inconsistent.

There's an enhancement request in place, but it is unlikely to be added in a near future due to the quantity of problems it can bring. See bug 6090.

Your best option is to create a new account and add proper associations, modifying also DefAccount and Accounts of users, QoS, Partitions, where necessary.

Any other question, don't hesitate to open a new bug.

Thanks!