Since 23.11 the systemd unit file includes line "User=slurm", which forces systems to start the daemons by slurm user from the beginning. In the past, the daemons switched to slurm user internally after some actions performed as root. The log file paths are in /var/log in the default slurm.conf, thus the daemons need root permissions to create/chown the files first. As a result, the logs go to syslog only, but not to /var/log/slurm*.log (the files are absent). Workaround: "touch /var/log/slurmctld.log && chown slurm:slurm /var/log/slurmctld.log"