group owner "wheel"

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group owner "wheel"

I recently installed an oss app, I was unable to make an alias of it, so I checked its permissions.
Its group owner was "wheel", now I'm just curious why it was set as wheel. btw, the user owner is my main account, who is not in group wheel.
So is there any drawbacks to adding myself to group "wheel"?, any drawbacks to changing group ownership to admin, root, or $Name?

powerbook G4 17", Mac OS X (10.4.11), 17" model

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 10:43 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,385 points

Nov 20, 2009 11:05 AM in response to vendt

Hi vendt, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

All Admin Users should be members of the wheel group, but you can add any user to that group.

Changing Ownership question might depend which APP it is, but normally if you're the only User you can change the group to you without ill effects.

Some ino on wheel group...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA44217?viewlocale=en_US

http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/AdvancedUnix/ugp/index.ws

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Answer 2

vendt Author

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Nov 20, 2009 11:42 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks,
I'm used to linux, but apparently usermod is not used by mac os x,
is there a mac OSX (10.4) equivalent of usermod, groupmod..etc.?

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Answer 3

BDAqua

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250,385 points

Nov 20, 2009 11:53 AM in response to vendt

Well, In Tiger we have a GUI to do it called NetInfo Manager in Applications>Utilities.

In Terminal do a man dscl, to rea who's in whell use this...

dscl . -read /Groups/wheel GroupMembership

Adding a user would be something like this I think...

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -append /groups/wheel GroupMembership username

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Answer 4

vendt Author

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Nov 20, 2009 12:39 PM in response to BDAqua

[QUOTE] Well, In Tiger we have a GUI to do it called NetInfo Manager in Applications>Utilities .[/QUOTE]
I'd rather learn the command line version:\

[QUOTE] sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -append /groups/wheel GroupMembership username [/QUOTE]
This added my username to /groups/wheel
dscl . -read /Groups/wheel GroupMembership //showed my name
however
groups //did not show me as in wheel

I then ran:
sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -append /groups/wheel GroupMembership [$UID] //"$UID" ---inside square brackets
now "groups" command also shows me in wheel
but
Make Alias is still greyed out...

Message was edited by: vendt

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Answer 5

vendt Author

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Nov 20, 2009 12:58 PM in response to vendt

also, I've tried restarting the comp, didn't know if init stuff needed to rescript
and I added userName value to wheel group (again) in netInfo...still cant make alias
The program i'm trying to make alias of is macCsound.

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

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Nov 20, 2009 1:06 PM in response to vendt

What exact APP is this?

Where exactly is it located?

What are the rights on the folder that it's in?

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Answer 7

rccharles

Level 6

13,037 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:34 PM in response to vendt

Here are some of my permissions:
mac $ pwd /Applications mac $ ls -l total 480 drwxr-xr-x 3 mac staff 102 Jan 24 2007 0xED-1.app/ -rwxr-xr-x 1 mac wheel 13780 Sep 15 15:47 0xED.app* drwxrwxr-x 4 root admin 136 Jan 11 1970 Acrobat Reader 5.0/ drwxrwxr-x 3 root admin 102 Sep 11 17:31 Address Book.app/ drwxrwxr-x 3 mac admin 102 Aug 15 2007 Adobe Help Viewer 1.0.app/ drwxrwxr-x 6 mac admin 204 Oct 31 2003 Adobe Reader 6.0/ drwxrwxr-x 5 mac admin 170 Nov 13 15:50 Adobe Reader 9/ ...

seems like other should be r-x

root # ls -ld WhatSize* drwx------ 3 mac admin 102 Apr 7 2006 WhatSize.app/ ------------- Used the gui alias command... ------------- root # ls -ld WhatSize* drwx------ 3 mac admin 102 Apr 7 2006 WhatSize.app/ -rw-r--r-- 1 mac admin 0 Nov 20 16:31 WhatSize.app alias root #

Robert

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Answer 8

vendt Author

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Nov 20, 2009 2:59 PM in response to rccharles

solved
It is in the Applications folder, and I noticed it wasn't just the one app, it was all of them in there.
Somehow the permissions for the folder was 755, and the owner-root, groupowner-wheel.
I'm not sure what the default values for it is(777 or 775 maybe?), but somehow it got changed.

Thanks for all the help in diagnoses.

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Answer 9

vendt Author

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Nov 20, 2009 3:03 PM in response to vendt

I'm still curious as to the default values of applications folder permission/and owner. I'm assuming the permission value got changed (I don't recollect ever messing with it, but its possible).

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Answer 10

rccharles

Level 6

13,037 points

Nov 21, 2009 2:17 PM in response to vendt

Seems to be 775. The owner is whoever did the install. Everyone can access because of the xx5.

Note, .app is really a directory. Notice when you change the permissions from the GUI, the finder change all the inter permissions. The finder deals with the x bit instead of the user.

Robert

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