Installing Debathena

Debathena installs on top of an existing Ubuntu or Debian installation. If you don’t have an existing installation, we recommend starting with Ubuntu, which can be downloaded here. We plan to provide a combined installer which will install both Ubuntu and Debathena, but that is not yet ready for testing.

Debathena installer

Debathena has an interactive command-line installer that should be easier to use than the manual installation instructions. You can run the Debathena installer by running the following commands as root:

wget -N http://debathena.mit.edu/install-debathena.sh;
sh install-debathena.sh

One of the first questions the installer will ask you is which category, or metapackage, you would like to install. The supported metapackages are:

debathena-standard: This package gives your machine full access to Athena services, but does not configure your machine to use Kerberos authentication and AFS home directories, and as such is an ideal choice for laptop users.
NOTE: This package works best when used with a local user account with the same username as your Athena username.
debathena-login: This package includes everything from debathena-standard, and configures your machine to use Kerberos authentication and AFS home directories. This allows other Athena users to log in to your machine, hence the name.
debathena-login-graphical: This package configures graphical software to integrate with the Athena environment. It contains debathena-login along with some additional dependencies useful for graphical workstations.
debathena-workstation: This package configures a private, graphical Debathena workstation. In addition to everything from debathena-login-graphical, this package contains configuration, such as automatic updates, designed to minimize the need for manual maintenance.

The installer will also ask you whether you wish to use your workstation to build Debathena packages—you can safely answer “no” unless you plan to build Debathena software.

Lastly, the installer will ask you whether you wish to install the third party software packages. This is a large package and provides all the third party software that is installed on Debathena cluster workstations. If you want your workstation to be exactly like a cluster workstation, you should choose to install this package. Alternatively, you can skip this package and install individual pieces of software when you need them.

Installation from a live CD (experimental)

We offer a Debathena live CD as an experimental feature.

Advanced options

Advanced users may wish to read our page on advanced installation options, including manual installation.

Troubleshooting

See the troubleshooting page for common issues.

If you run into any problems with Debathena not discussed on the troubleshooting page, please contact the maintainers.