Subject: Re: wheel? (was: wheel vs root (newby question?))
To: None <leonard@dstc.edu.au>
From: Jarle Fredrik Greipsland <jarle@idt.unit.no>
List: current-users
Date: 01/09/1996 13:29:19
In article <199601082212.IAA05485@azure.dstc.edu.au>, David Leonard <leonard@dstc.edu.au> writes:
> Hmm this makes me wonder: what is the history of the name given to gid 0?
> Why `wheel' and not `privileged', `su' or something like that.
According to the jargon file (ftp://ftp.unit.no/pub/misc/jargon):
:wheel: [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] n. A
person who has an active {wheel bit}. "We need to find a
wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." (See {wedged}, sense
1.)
:wheel bit: n. A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform
some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or
write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or
look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the
system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. The term was
invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to
TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a privileged
logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term entered the
UNIX culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s and has been gaining
popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also {root}.
-jarle
--
"You can't grep dead trees."
-- Eyvind Bernhardsen