Core cannot escalate to root on openshift4.x "sudo: account validation failure, is your account locked?"

Issue

• On OpenShift 4.x on nodes running RHCOS, we observed the following error message when attempting to ssh to the node and ascend to root:

core@worker-1 ~]$ sudo su -
sudo: account validation failure, is your account locked?

• Unable to ascend to root on core nodes, cannot run tools like toolbox or sosreport

• Node is otherwise healthy/in ready status

• Looking at the service we observe the following messaging:

$ systemctl status user@1000.service
● user@1000.service - User Manager for UID 1000
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)
user@.service --> PAM failed: authentication failure
user@1000.service failed to set up PAM session: Operation not permitted
user@1000.service failed at step PAM spawning /usr/lib/systemd/systemd: Operation not permitted
user@1000.service: Failed with result 'protocol'.

• Restarts do not mitigate the issue