
Where did the wheel group get its name? - adtac
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1262/where-did-the-wheel-group-get-its-name
======
teddyh
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:

(Written by Richard Stallman in the manual for GNU “su”)

“ _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 't know how to do that in Unix.)_

 _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 "wheel group" feature would
make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers._

 _I '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. _”

[https://ftp.gnu.org/old-
gnu/Manuals/coreutils-4.5.4/html_nod...](https://ftp.gnu.org/old-
gnu/Manuals/coreutils-4.5.4/html_node/coreutils_149.html#SEC150)

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ChuckMcM
I can confirm that it originated in TENEX. TENEX was the first operating
system that DEC did for the PDP 10 architecture (a follow on to the PDP 6
architecture). Prior to that, on the PDP 8, PDP-12, and PDP-11 the various
operating systems used user identification codes (UICs) and while [0, 0] was
special it wasn't named. It was the UIC reserved for the Operator.

TENEX introduced the notion that non-Operators could be empowered to do
Operator type things (like load tapes, mount and unmount file systems, Etc.)
and to do that they added privilege bits. These bits were associated with UICs
and the bit that enabled Operator privileges was called the 'Wheel' bit.
(anecdotally the 'big wheel')

UNIX, which was developed in places where there was also a large DEC presence,
used group membership like DEC applied privilege bits. The group for people
with operator privileges was naturally "wheel" based on the history.

~~~
msla
> TENEX was the first operating system that DEC did for the PDP 10
> architecture

No, that's TOPS-10. TENEX was TEN EXtended, the OS BBN did for the PDP-10 they
extended to have paged virtual memory. TENEX is an ancestor to TOPS-20, which
_was_ a DEC product.

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361271](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361271)

> TENEX is a new time sharing system implemented on a DEC PDP-10 augmented by
> special paging hardware developed at BBN.

[https://github.com/PDP-10/tenex](https://github.com/PDP-10/tenex)

(Lots more old -10 stuff at the user account, like WAITS and ITS.)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Oh that is awesome I stand corrected, thanks.

At USC's engineering computer laboratory (at one time in the late 70's / early
80's running 7 different 10's) the install history was TENEX (given the
association with BBN I expect that was why that machine was on the ARPAnet)
then came TOPS-10 for some of the undergraduate accessible machines and then
the TENEX machines got TOPS-20 as an upgrade.

Clearly the lore as passed along to me when I was an systems programmer in one
of the sister labs was incorrect. Now I have to figure out how to erase these
cuniform tablets! :-)

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valenciarose
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.

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:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Murphy_(computer_scie...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Murphy_\(computer_scientist)

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Isamu
The term was common at CMU in the TOPS-20 days, as a synonym for "superuser".
I remember office doors with names and designations like "big wheel" and
"training wheel", etc.

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mcculley
I have always wondered why the admin user is named "root". It makes sense for
the "root" filesystem as filesystems are structured as a tree. But the set of
users is flat. Even considering groups, there is no tree structure to group
membership.

~~~
dghughes
People learning Linux find it confusing. They ask what root is and understand
the concept of root of the file system. Then I say there is a user called root
which confuses them. Then a group root only root is in it when the user root
is created. But the two root words are not two groups one is the owner root
(who is user root) it isn't the group.

~~~
lyzan
I've been doing linux for awhile and that explanation is confusing to me, so I
see where they're coming from.

I usually oversimplify: "root" is a keyword typically used to be all
incompacing. The system root contains all files in the system. The user root
is a super-admin that has all user rights in the system. The group root is a
super-admin group the root user is assigned to and has all group rights.

~~~
ScottBurson
"encompassing"

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alfiedotwtf
I can't remember which BSD book it was in, but one of them mentioned that
'wheel' was reference to the Knights of the Round Table i.e not a single admin
user, but a shared, equal privilege.

... my childhood was a lie

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majewsky
Huh. And here I always thought it's because these users are allowed to "take
the wheel".

~~~
derefr
I had to stop and ponder the number of layers of humor intended when, in the
movie WALL-E, the captain’s interface to the ship is a robot that resembles a
ship’s helm. Yes, there’s a naval metaphor... but it’s also an example of a
root user acting not through root privilege, but through wheel privilege. :)

~~~
bsder
It's certainly possible. The Pixar folks had a _lot_ of interaction with the
BSD folks early on.

John Lasseter, who headed up Pixar, drew the most widely known BSD Daemon,
after all.

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_emacsomancer_
For some reason, I have of memory of reading that `wheel` was from
`wheelhouse`
([https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wheelhouse](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wheelhouse)),
as in the place where only navigators would have access. And I do see that in
one of the downvoted stackexchange answers.

~~~
michrassena
Even if this turns out to be false, I find it a more satisfying answer. "Big-
wheel" as a source for the term seems quite colloquial, whereas "wheel-house"
indicates a bit of underlying culture -- it's the slightly more sophisticated
metaphor.

~~~
jandrese
Unfortunately the general rule with word etymology is the most sensible answer
is usually wrong.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Sometimes they're fun though: e.g. _derring-do_ is the result of
misunderstandings and misprinting.

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Analemma_
Etymology is such a strange thing. This isn't a word from the mists of history
and this thread already has four different proposed origins.

~~~
pvg
It's mostly that folk etymology is very common. The etymology of this term is
not exactly mysterious.

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koolba
I always thought it had the same meaning as in poker, i.e. the best possible
low hand in a high / low game[1] and came about because the root user has id
zero.

[1]: [http://www.poker-vibe.com/poker/terms/wheel/](http://www.poker-
vibe.com/poker/terms/wheel/)

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INTPenis
My favorite piece of Unix curiosa to add in this thread is that there was
once, briefly, a Unix where the root user was called "avatar".

This amused me when I found out about it so I started using it as my username
on IRC. Meaning the name that shows up in your vhost when you join channels,
back in the days people who joined with root@host would be yelled at for using
IRC as root. So I joined with avatar@host and no one cared. :)

~~~
raldi
Yeah, I used Windows NT for a while in the late 90's and named my user account
"root" just for cognitive dissonnace. But then when I'd launch an IRC client,
it would put that in my identification string and I'd get kicked off of
channels (or whole servers) with the message, "Don't IRC as root."

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a-dub
Hah. Interesting. All along I thought it was the group for the poor bastards
who had to share the UNIX chore wheel.

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blancNoir
"My dad's a pretty big wheel down at the cracker factory." \-- Milhouse Van
Houten

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amyjess
Huh, I'd always assumed it referred to the wheel on a ship. Learn something
new every day.

~~~
amelius
Me too. I think it makes more sense that way.

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0care
wheel is turning and you can't slow down?

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janci
Jesus take the wheel.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

