Pros and cons of SUDO Vs Wheel

JockVSJock · 03-24-2015, 07:37 PM

So right now in some of my servers, some of my users are in the Wheel group and then I have some users who fall under /etc/sudoers. Don't have any consistency, however I want to change that.

I know that wheel group is legacy.

SUDO gives an audit trail I believe under /var/log/secure.

I'm wondering what others have experienced and setup which worked better in the long run, place users either in wheel group or in SUDO?

btmiller · 03-24-2015, 08:55 PM

Also sudo allows the ability to run only certain commands as root instead of granting unlimited root privileges. Further, IIRC wheel group members must still know the root password to su whereas that is not the case with sudo.

JockVSJock · 03-25-2015, 05:43 AM

Does wheel group have an impact on logging in, say via ssh?

btmiller · 03-25-2015, 07:47 AM

Not that I know of, unless the administrator has configured things specially to allow or deny remote logins to group members.

sundialsvcs · 03-25-2015, 10:19 PM

Actually, on a great many systems, the command sudo su works just fine, allowing you to get to full root privileges using your own password!