[TUHS] historical users and groups

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 14 Jan 2009, at 00:59, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

> staff group
> How would this differ from wheel or operators?
> Any recent systems actually have default use of this?

My memory (from BSD 4.2 / 4/3 systems, I didn't use anything older  
other than transiently) is that staff was for, well, staff: real  
permanent staff, as opposed to guests or students.

Wheel was people who could su, and I think that su knew about the  
wheel group.  Or maybe it just knew about GID 0?  Was wheel always GID  
0?  I have an unreliable memory that it was wheel because it was  
round, like 0.

However This was all lore passed down from people who ran the systems  
before me (other than the su thing, I am pretty sure that I looked at  
source for (some version of) su and it did indeed know about some  
special group) and I don't know where they got it from.

--tim