Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:38:30 +0100 From: John Murphy <freebsd001@freeode.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Can login using root password, but not remotely with SSH Message-ID: <20071023023830.6cf11d47@turion.freeode.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <18204.64615.764929.781460@jerusalem.litteratus.org> References: <20071022074758.5131513C4A5@mx1.freebsd.org> <1193065278.73574.42.camel@secretariat.lanl.gov> <18204.64615.764929.781460@jerusalem.litteratus.org>
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On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:39:19 -0400 Robert Huff <roberthuff@rcn.com> wrote: >=20 > James writes: >=20 > > Add yourself to wheel (which is the root group on FreeBSD, a name > > I believe it inherited from earlier BSDs, but I've no idea what > > the justification for choosing 'wheel' is; any BSD historians > > here - you'd be welcome to let us know!) >=20 > Not sure, but I believe "wheel" predates UNIX. I have > certainly seen the idea on OSes that do. Interesting. Google found this: =46rom "The New Hacker's Dictionary version 4.2.2" by Various editors wheel n. [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who has an active wheel bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." The traditional name of security group zero in BSD (to which the major system-internal users like root belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on this usage, modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can go root. --=20 Thanks, John.
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