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I've commonly seen references to a wheel user group online as well as when setting up my sudoers file. Does naming a group wheel imply something special about the group or is it just a name for a generic group used in the same manner that foo and bar are thrown about?

drs
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    See http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/1262/22565 I'd be tempted to vote it as a duplicate? – Stéphane Chazelas Aug 27 '14 at 14:26
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    Whoever considers this question a duplicate may have missed the point. The linked question is about the name. This question is more about its role. I thought the difference was obvious. – Manngo Feb 16 '22 at 01:56

2 Answers2

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Rather than have to dole out individual permissions on a system, you can add users to the wheel group and they can gain access to administrator levels, simply by being in the wheel group. It's typically tied directly into sudo.

## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
%wheel  ALL=(ALL)   ALL

Which means you can do anything on the system with sudo <cmd>.

Previously you needed to be in the wheel group if you wanted to have access to use certain commands, such as su.

excerpt - Wheel on Wikipedia

Modern Unix systems use user groups to control access privileges. The wheel group is a special user group used on some Unix systems to control access to the su command, which allows a user to masquerade as another user (usually the super user).

slm
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    Why is it called "wheel"? – Gherman Nov 01 '19 at 16:38
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    The term was derived from the slang phrase big wheel, referring to a person with great power or influence. wikipedia – fracz Nov 08 '19 at 07:50
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    Here's an alternative thought I had: On a ship, one can pass "The Wheel" to trusted subordinates to man the ship. It also has significance in terms of control but also added responsibility i.e. the steering wheel of car – robert Mar 25 '21 at 14:15
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Early on in the days of Unix one had to be a member of wheel in order to su to root. Used as an additional layer of protection for the system. I don't know of any special significance now, it is just a legacy like the uucp group.

Krapp
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doneal24
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