On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 10:02:04PM -0500, Donald Cooley wrote:
> What's a 'wheel' or 'non-wheel' user? Been using Linux a couple of years
> and never heard that term. Thanks.
Hi Donald,
Firstly, a quick suggestion that you don't top post. It makes it
difficult for old folks like me to follow what something is about--it's
better if you try to imitate a conversation. (In this case, your
question is self-explanatory, but if, for example, you'd written, what
is that? and I'd just seen it in passing, I would have simply deleted
the post, figuring it had nothing to do with me.)
Also, it's good to trim the post to which you're responding--some folks
still pay for bandwidth by quantity (and that might start happening more
and more here in the US too) so it's always good to trim, again, it
makes it easier.
I'm only doing this lecture because I am answering the question, so I
figure it gives me the right. :)
And now, to your question.
I'm not sure of the origin, but it's common in the BSDs, and probably
most other Unix and Unix like systems, to have a group called wheel.
They have more rights than the average user. If you look at your
/etc/sudoers file, you'll see that there's a couple of lines specially
aimed at the wheel group--one allowing them to run all commands, another
allowing them to run all commands without a password.
If you look in /etc/pam.d and look at the su file, you'll again see
mention of the wheel group. So, it's simply a traditional power group.
Gentoo and a few others only allow a user in the wheel group to use su.
Non wheel members are not allowed to do an su to root. This is also the
case in the BSDs.
So, the short answer is that it's a traditional group that in various
forms of Unix and Unix like systems has more powers and abilities than
ordinary users. Other distributions, such as RedHat based ones, have
these lines in their default /etc/sudoers and /etc/pam.d/su, but don't
make use of them by default.
Hope this was clear enough--it's late and I'm sleepy--if not, post
again.
--
Scott Robbins
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