Wheel War

A wheel war is a contest between privileged users on a shared, on-line computer system, in which each user discovers or invents ways to interfere with the others' use of the system. Though generally done as a Practical Joke or a way of blowing off some steam, such warring can also be the result of serious administrative disagreements.

ORIGIN OF TERM

The term originates in the was among the earliest tools for getting things done, and "big wheel" denoted an important person in the vernacular of the time.

Because of the movement of operating system developers and users from TENEX/TOPS-20 to Unix , the term was likewise adopted by the Unix community. In many Unix systems, the Su command could be used to gain Superuser access to a machine. Fearing misuse, some system administrators only allowed users in a certain Group to use su; this group was frequently referred to as "wheel", which similarly indicated a level of trust greater than that of a System Operator .

GNU su does not support "wheel", primarily for such philosophical reasons ''22.5 su: Run a command with substitute user and group id'' in the ''GNU Core-utils'' manual.

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Wheel War