> the only thing that locking the root account gets you is assurance that if you ever bork the user you created in this guide (or sudo functionality as a whole) you'll have no way to recover without booting into another environment.
That's not a unique or novel insight. For the case your system gets borked (either by yourself, your hardware or your cloud provider) you need a plan in advance:
1. How can I access the data the server has or how much of it can I afford to lose?
2. How do I get a replacement running within a time window acceptable for my usage?
The answers will be very different depending on your use case. But how you locked the root user has very little impact on them.
Booting into another environment is always one option in my plan so locking the root user doesn't frighten me.
That's not a unique or novel insight. For the case your system gets borked (either by yourself, your hardware or your cloud provider) you need a plan in advance:
1. How can I access the data the server has or how much of it can I afford to lose?
2. How do I get a replacement running within a time window acceptable for my usage?
The answers will be very different depending on your use case. But how you locked the root user has very little impact on them.
Booting into another environment is always one option in my plan so locking the root user doesn't frighten me.