Oh my! The wailing and the rending of the garments...

I'll amend my own hint, after not being satisfied with the long term outlook, but having made this hint here and in other places for folks having permissions problems ranging from annoying to crippling...

There is indeed a better way to accomplish the goals for with this hint was intended, but first:

I'm not sure WHEN the policy changed, but indeed up until recently, possibly as late as 10.3, admin users WERE REQUIRED to be part of group wheel. This is going right back to the Public Beta and Puma and Jaguar, since my current install dates back to Panther, with successful update-in-place installs right up until 10.5.2 and/or related security update. (and would be back to Jaguar, barring a catastophic powerboard failure on my laptop (RIP G3 Wallstreet) and an undetermined HD failure on a Cube) Apple's installers DID NOT remove me from group wheel untill then.

Now, as I said, I wasn't completely satisfied... I'm sure Apple had reason for the wheel policy change, and future updates could break things again. I want to be compliant, but I did not want to to an erase-install.

These hints
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010827120222505
and
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2007110800450816

detail the glory of the Setup Assistant which WILL properly bring your wayward account and permissions back into the fold.

As I am obviously a careless jerk, I simply deleted the flag that tells Setup not to run, and let it create a parallel new admin account. I took my main account out of group wheel, made sure that I was only in the same groups as the setup assistant created for the new account, and voila. All is good, and I don't have to dig out install disks from 2004.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled crucifixion, already in progress.

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I'm not sure WHEN the policy changed, but indeed up until recently, possibly as late as 10.3, admin users WERE REQUIRED to be part of group wheel. This is going right back to the Public Beta and Puma and Jaguar,

I can't speak to the public beta or 10.1.x, but the clean installs of Jaguar and Panther I keep for testing both show the only member of the group wheel to be root. The admin accounts DO NOT belong to group wheel.

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Well.. just look into my old G3/G4-system, updated from 10.1 to 10.5 over the years, and the main admin account is member of wheel. Other, later created admins are not member of wheel. Not sure if I - for ever what reason - put myself into wheel long ago or if it is vanilla setup.

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