I've always wondered why the admin group is called wheel
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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It's from the phrase "big wheel", meaning a person with a lot of power/influence. Similar to "big cheese"... It would have been better to use "cheese" instead of "wheel" IMO.
Pretty sure it's not. I saw something on this topic a few weeks ago but can't quite remember. Iirc, it was a term in an early early OS, where a bit in memory was the privilege but and could be set or unset by turning a real wheel on the computer. This Stück with some people developing UNIX, so they called the wheel group wheel, but none of them are sure who came up with this.
Of course, this is just hearsay.
The best part of working in a meat grinder startup were the Linux masters teaching you stuff like
cat /dev/random > /dev/pty23
or
su _otheruser_
chsh -s /bin/false
Little known fact: A Stanford mainframe kept logs of the activities of the 'wheels' in a journal -- the 'journal of the wheels'. Young George Lucas, who briefly attended the university, found that journal, and became fascinated with the 'Wheel Wars'. He later drafted a document that he called 'Journal of the Whills', based largely on what he read on those logs; this is the draft that later became 'Whill Wars', and ultimately, of course, 'Star Wars'.
I have no idea if this is true, but I'd be impressed if you just made it up.
Thanks indeed; but I think I'd be more impressed if it were actually true.
(but yeah, the first draft of Star Wars was called 'journal of the whills'.)
... So... Is it true or not?!
It's true. You can trust me, I'm a doctor.