At 11:44 AM 1/9/96, Scott Telford wrote:
>>From The Jargon File 3.2.0:
>
>: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."  (See {wedged}, sense 1.)
>   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}
>
>: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}.

Much better than mine.  I like it.  ;-)

Shawn.

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