[Gllug] What is the 'wheel' group for?

[Richard Jones]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 08:30:26AM +0100, John Hearns wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 06:09, Dylan wrote:
> > Hello again
> > 
> > While searching docs for info relating to my last post, I came across 
> > references to the wheel group. So the $SUBJECT says it: what's it for?
> Its the group owner of system files.
> 
> I always took the derivation to be a play on 'big wheels'. Could very
> well be wrong.

According to the Jargon file, it's from the slang [which I'd never
heard of, so presumably Merkin] 'big wheel' meaning a powerful person.

The full entry is:

wheel n.  [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who
has an active wheel bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung
tape drives." (See wedged, sense 1.) The traditional name of security
group zero in BSD (to which the major system-internal users like root
belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on this usage,
modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can go root.

Rich.

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