Toor

What is the ‘toor’ user on FreeBSD?

When installing and using FreeBSD, you may wonder why there are two users with user ID of zero. What is this second user 'toor' and do we need it?

Summary

What is the ’toor’ user on FreeBSD? Linux and *BSD systems have by default a root user installed. As it has a user ID of zero (0), it gains the highest level of permissions from the kernel. On FreeBSD systems, there is also the ’toor’ user, with the equal high-level user ID of zero. It is simply the reversed version of ‘root’, and installed as a backup account. By default, it has no shell assigned, so it can’t log in.