What does root:wheel mean in the following?
chown root:wheel myfile
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2 Answers
root is a user (the super user) and wheel is a group (of super users I guess).
chown root:wheel myfile
means making myfile belong to the user root and the group wheel (read man chown for more information).
answered Sep 4, 2010 at 10:30
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wheelis typically the group with sudo rights (see this question) Commented Sep 4, 2010 at 14:28 -
Some Unixen do this for files which are to be accessed by system administrators. Typically these file will have a user:group of root:wheel and permissions rw-rw----. This approach has fallen out of favour, as it allows system changes to be too readily made in error (eg,
cd /etc; …; vi hostnamewould succeed); rather the modern approach has system files owned by root:root and requires the use of the sudo command prior to successfully changing a file (eg,cd /etc; …; vi hostnamewould fail, only the more intentionalsudo vi hostnamesucceeds).– vk5tuCommented Oct 14, 2020 at 13:34
More specifically about the wheel group:It is a Unix group specifically intended for only those users who have rights to su as root.
