Experimental features for Debathena
Sometimes we have cool new features that we haven’t completely
tested yet. We think they should work, but if you try one and it
breaks you get to keep both pieces. Feedback and bug reports
welcome; contact the Debathena maintainers.
The -proposed release
The proposed release contains new versions of packages that are
scheduled to be incorporated into the production release. (Athena 9.4
users can think of this analogous to the dev cell.) Packages in this
release have undergone bare-bones testing, but have not yet been
tested in all environments. This is where you come in — you can
help us test these packages and let us know what does and doesn't
work. However, due to the nature of the -proposed release, we
strongly encourage you not to enable this on your primary machine. If
you have a virtual machine, or a Debathena machine that is not your
primary machine, you can enable the -proposed release by creating the
file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debathena-proposed.list with the
following contents:
deb http://debathena.mit.edu/apt DISTRO-proposed debathena debathena-config debathena-system openafs
deb-src http://debathena.mit.edu/apt DISTRO-proposed debathena debathena-config debathena-system openafs
Be sure to replace DISTRO with the name of your
distribution (e.g. jaunty). You will need to
run aptitude update to enable the -proposed release.
You can view a list of the packages currently in the -proposed release, but keep in mind that it may be empty at times if nothing is currently being tested.
Installing from a live CD
Installing from a live CD can have several advantages over our
regular super-simple installer.
- You can try Debathena without modifying your computer, to see how it
works with your hardware.
- You don’t need an existing Debian or Ubuntu install.
- You can easily install it alongside other existing operating
systems, including Mac OS X and Windows.
- You can boot from the CD to access Debathena features from
a computer you don’t want to install Debathena on.
However, there are some significant caveats.
- It’s not well-tested like our other installation methods; it’s
still an experimental installation method.
- You cannot use it to install into an existing LVM.
You can easily burn a live CD yourself, or you can come by
the SIPB office and we’ll be
glad to get you one.
Notes
- A portion of the install requires Internet access. For greatest
speed and reliability, we recommend that you use an Ethernet cable as
opposed to wireless. If you haven’t used Ethernet on this computer on
MIT’s network before, be sure to register your computer before
installing by visiting any website in Firefox while booted from the
live CD. You’ll also need to do this to log in as your Athena user
without installing.
- The live CD currently only installs
the debathena-standard and
debathena-workstation installation
options.
Installation instructions:
- Download the current live CD image from http://debathena.mit.edu/live/.
- Burn the image to a CD-R. Be sure to use a 700 MB CD-R.
You can do this on any computer with a CD-R
drive, including many Athena workstations.
For burning CDs on Athena, we recommend brasero.
- Boot the computer to be installed from the burned CD. This may require
pressing a key like F12 or ESC during startup to access a boot menu. On
a Mac, hold down the ‘c’ key.
- A menu of options will come up. You can select the first option to
try Ubuntu and Debathena before you install, or select "Install Debathena"
to install right away.
- If you elect to try Debathena before installing, you can install
Debathena by logging in as user ubuntu and opening the icon on the
desktop, or by running the ubiquity command from a terminal.