OCI: SSHD Service Fails to Start with Error "Privilege separation user sshd does not exist"

 Applies To:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Version N/A and later 

Linux x86-64 

Symptoms 

Privilege separation user sshd does not exist according to boot log:

[FAILED] Failed to start OpenSSH server daemon. 
See 'systemctl status sshd.service' for details. 

 The systemctl status sshd command shows the following:  

# systemctl status sshd 
sshd.service - OpenSSH server daemon 
  Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sshd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) 
  Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2024-03-02 09:16:02 GMT; 9s ago 
    Docs: man:sshd(8) 
          man:sshd_config(5) 
 Process: 3808975 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sshd -D $OPTIONS $CRYPTO_POLICY (code=exited, status=255) 
 Main PID: 3808975 (code=exited, status=255) 
   Tasks: 0 (limit: 48400) 
  Memory: 0B 
  CGroup: /system.slice/sshd.service