# Adding user to wheel



## Jayuqo (Sep 14, 2012)

Probably a stupid question but I just can't get this to work even after a few google search.

I want to give a user root privileges by adding him to the "wheel" group in /etc/group.

```
wheel:*:0:root,myuser
```
For some unknown reason, the user can't edit/modify anything (always get permission denied). What am I doing wrong?

Thanks
Jay

P.S.: Running FreeBSD 9.0


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## izotov (Sep 14, 2012)

Adding someone to wheel does not mean root privileges. This is just a group (that is the owner group of lots of files and directories).
It still depends on the permissions of the file in question if a member of wheel can open it or not.
Example:
My user is member of wheel but is not able to open a file with owner root:wheel and permissions 700.

An advantage of wheel is that its members may su to root.


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## SirDice (Sep 14, 2012)

Only root can do this.

`# pw groupmod wheel -m myuser`


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