Wheel (computing)

In Unix operating systems, the term wheel refers to a user account with a wheel bit, a system setting that provides additional special system privileges that empower a user to execute restricted commands that ordinary user accounts cannot access.[1][2]

Origins

The term wheel was first applied to computer user privilege levels after the introduction of the TENEX operating system, later distributed under the name TOPS-20 in the 1960s and early 1970s.[2][3] The term was derived from the slang phrase big wheel, referring to a person with great power or influence.[1]

In the 1980s, the term was imported into Unix culture due to the migration of operating system developers and users from TENEX/TOPS-20 to Unix.[2]

Wheel group

Modern Unix systems generally use user groups as a security protocol to control access privileges. The wheel group is a special user group used on some Unix systems, mostly BSD systems,[4] to control access to the su[5][6] or sudo command, which allows a user to masquerade as another user (usually the super user).[1][2][7] Debian-like operating systems create a group called sudo with similar purpose to wheel group.[4]

Wheel war

The phrase wheel war, which originated at Stanford University,[8] was first documented in the 1983 version of The Jargon File. A 'wheel war' was characterized as a part of an immature 'larval phase' wherein students with administrative privileges would attempt to lock each other out of a university's multi-user (see also: multiseat) computer system, sometimes causing unintentional harm to other users.[9]

References
  1. "Wheel". Jargon File 4.4.7. Eric S. Raymond. Retrieved 2017-04-22.
  2. "Wheel bit". Jargon File 4.4.7. Eric S. Raymond. Retrieved 2017-04-22.
  3. "TWENEX". Jargon File 4.4.7. Eric S. Raymond. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
  4. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/why-is-debian-not-creating-the-wheel-group-by-default
  5. "su(1) - OpenBSD manual pages". man.openbsd.org. Retrieved 2018-05-05.
  6. "su". www.freebsd.org. Retrieved 2018-05-05.
  7. Levi, Bozidar (2002). UNIX Administration: A Comprehensive Sourcebook for Effective Systems and Network Management. CRC Press. p. 207. ISBN 0-8493-1351-1.
  8. Raymond; et al. "Jargon File". Jargon File 2.1.1. Eric S. Raymond. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  9. Steele; et al. "Jargon File". Jargon File 1.5.0. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
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