How to create an admin user when running Papermerge locally from source code?

[bleebvio]

I am trying to run Papermerge (PMS) in development mode from source code, following all the README instructions.
However, I am currently facing two issues.

Issue 1: Cannot create admin user using pm

I am unable to create an admin user using the pm CLI.

Querying the database directly returns no users

pm users ls also returns no users

But when I try to create a user, pm reports that the user already exists

Example:

(papermerge) vsc_998@m_village:~/learning/papermerge-main/papermerge-core$ pm users create --username admin --password admin
User admin already exists
WARNING:papermerge.core.features.audit.db.audit_context:Session is not usable, skipping audit context cleanup

(papermerge) vsc_998@m_village:~/learning/papermerge-main/papermerge-core$ pm users ls
No users found

This looks inconsistent, since the user is reported as existing, but no users are listed either via CLI or database query.

Issue 2: Frontend keeps calling /me endpoint without a valid token

The frontend application continuously calls the /me endpoint even when:

I am not logged in

I am already on the login page

No valid access token is present

This results in repeated unauthorized requests PM-0001: Client failed to retrieve current user from '/api/users/me' endpoint.

I have already set both VITE_REMOTE_USER and VITE_REMOTE_GROUPS as described in the documentation.
Is the authentication server required in this case?

I am currently on the master branch at commit “fix audit columns NULL/NOT NULL issue (#1209)”.