<story><title>Where did the wheel group get its name?</title><url>https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1262/where-did-the-wheel-group-get-its-name</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>teddyh</author><text>Rather famously, back when “su” was still part of GNU coreutils (in 2007 it was removed from default installations, and in 2012 the code was removed from the package, since other implementations existed in other packages), GNU su did not, contrary to Unix traditional behavior, restrict the usage of “su” to members of the wheel group:&lt;p&gt;(Written by Richard Stallman in the manual for GNU “su”)&lt;p&gt;“&lt;i&gt;Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t know how to do that in Unix.)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The &amp;quot;wheel group&amp;quot; feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first. &lt;/i&gt;”&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ftp.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;old-gnu&amp;#x2F;Manuals&amp;#x2F;coreutils-4.5.4&amp;#x2F;html_node&amp;#x2F;coreutils_149.html#SEC150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ftp.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;old-gnu&amp;#x2F;Manuals&amp;#x2F;coreutils-4.5.4&amp;#x2F;html_nod...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Where did the wheel group get its name?</title><url>https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1262/where-did-the-wheel-group-get-its-name</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>valenciarose</author><text>Its origins are with TENEX and from there TOPS-20.  TOPS-20 was ubiquitous in computer science departments in the early 80s when I worked at DEC.&lt;p&gt;The release of TENEX precedes the release of Unix by a year or so and the release of the first BSD by seven years.  If you want the etymological roots for this, you would need to ask Dan Murphy or one of his contemporaries: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Daniel_Murphy_(computer_scientist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Daniel_Murphy_(computer_scie...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>