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?
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2See unix.stackexchange.com/q/1262/22565 I'd be tempted to vote it as a duplicate?– Stéphane ChazelasAug 27, 2014 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.– ManngoFeb 16 at 1:56
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2 Answers
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).
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3Here'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– robertMar 25, 2021 at 14:15
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.
