Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 23:22:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu> To: Dave Bender <bendede@startribune.com> Cc: "G.P.Singh" <gpsingh@mailcity.com>, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: root login Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980602231018.22038U-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <01BD8DB1.7BA4AF00@MANNY>
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On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Dave Bender wrote: > Slightly off the topic, but I've been wondering: > > Why is it called the "wheel" group? What's the wheel? Wheel, aka GID 0, is the group that allows access to use the su command. Why it's called `wheel' is a bit of UNIX folklore. >From the New Hacker's Dictionary: 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. wheel bit /n./ A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term entered the Unix culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also root. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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