Debathena advanced installation options

PXE Installation

For computers connected directly to MITnet, it may be possible to use MIT's PXE server to install Debathena. For more information, see our documentation on the PXE installer.

Other metapackages

We have also created these additional metapackages for more granular control over the Debathena installation process. The first 3 packages (debathena-clients, debathena-locker, debathena-athena-libraries) comprise the vast majority of debathena-standard, so you are encouraged to install that package instead whenever possible.

debathena-clients: This package depends on Athena clients that do not require AFS, like blanche, athinfo, and mailusage (the sorts of programs that are normally found in /usr/athena/bin on Athena 9).
debathena-locker: This package depends on programs like attach, add, athrun, etc., that deal with AFS and Athena lockers. With it, you should be able to run locker software modulo the issue of having necessary shared libraries. Statically linked locker software such as Mathematica should just work.
debathena-athena-libraries: This package recommends many shared libraries from Debian that are needed for running software in Athena lockers.
debathena-build-depends: This depends on everything needed to build all Debathena packages.

Other package managers

We strongly recommend using aptitude to install and upgrade Debathena, because apt-get and other package managers are not always smart enough to figure out how to install the necessary packages. Also note that the synaptic and adept GUIs do not readily support setting the DEBIAN_FRONTEND environment variable. (If you have to use them, you should use dpkg-reconfigure debconf to change the Debian Frontend to noninteractive, and when you are done, change it back to the default of dialog. Alternatively, you can not change the Debconf priority; you will just be asked more unecessary questions.)

Manual installation

You are strongly encouraged to install Debathena using the install script if at all possible. However, if you wish to install Debathena manually, you may follow these steps (as root):

Install the repository’s public key:

wget -N http://debathena.mit.edu/apt/debathena-archive.asc;
apt-key add debathena-archive.asc

To make the Debathena repository available to your package manager, add the following two lines to /etc/apt/sources.list. Substitute the name of your distribution (etch, lenny, squeeze, hardy, intrepid, or jaunty) for DISTRO.
```
deb http://debathena.mit.edu/apt DISTRO debathena debathena-config debathena-system openafs
deb-src http://debathena.mit.edu/apt DISTRO debathena debathena-config debathena-system openafs
```
To give aptitude access to the new repository, run
```
aptitude update
```
(These components contain the packages needed for a normal installation; further information about our repository structure is available below.)
If you are using Ubuntu, you must also make sure that the universe repository is enabled. This is the default setting in modern versions of Ubuntu.
Install the appropriate openafs-modules- metapackage for the kernel you are using. To find out which version that is, run the following command.
```
aptitude search ~i~nlinux-image
```
Look for an entry like linux-image-generic or linux-image-server. Substitute openafs-modules for linux-image and install that package. For example, if you have the linux-image-generic package installed, run the following command.
```
aptitude install openafs-modules-generic
```
Now you can install Debathena packages. The following will give you the recommended set of packages; other metapackages (listed above, or on the installation page) are also available.
```
env DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive aptitude install debathena-standard
```
Please subscribe to our announcement list, so that we can send you announcements about changes in the project and important security upgrades, with the following command:
```
blanche debathena-announce -a $USER
```
If you are using debathena-login, debathena-login-graphical, or debathena-workstation, and want to configure access controls, or are using debathena-standard and have a local username different from your Athena username, or want to do other supported customizations, see customizing Debathena.

Debathena repository component options

The Debathena APT repository has several components (the items after the distribution name in the /etc/apt/sources.list line), described below.

You should add at least the debathena component, and at least one of the debathena-config or debathena-manual-config components in /etc/apt/sources.list, if you want any of the metapackages to install. We recommend the debathena-config component, but have made the debathena-manual-config component available for users who want to manage their own configuration.

The debathena component contains all the software that we have ported from Athena, along with our metapackages.
The debathena-system component contains software from Debian that we have modified to have better Athena support, including adding AFS and Hesiod support to bash and tcsh, and making kinit get Kerberos 4 tickets by default.
The debathena-config component contains packages that replace configuration files on your system using dpkg-divert.
The debathena-manual-config component contains packages that do nothing, but satisfy dependencies as though they were debathena-*-config packages. These are useful if you want to manage your own configuration Debian files.
The openafs component contains pre-built OpenAFS kernel modules for the stock kernels in the distributions we support. We haven’t tested them all, but the hope is that they will save people from building their own kernel modules when they don’t have to.