You can set a default printer on Debathena by either setting the PRINTER environment variable to the name of the printer (to set this for all users, consider adding it to /etc/environment), or by asking hesreq@mit.edu for a “cluster information” entry for your machine.
Setting up access controls on Debathena is documented on a separate page.
The add and renew commands are actually aliases defined by the Athena dotfiles. They will be available if you are using AFS home directories with the debathena-login package, or on local accounts with the debathena-shell-config package.
debathena-standard’s bash configuration supports using the ATHENA_USER environment variable as the username to get Kerberos tickets for when you use the renew command. The easiest way to do this is to run
export ATHENA_USER=andersk
where andersk is your Athena username. You will need to add this command to ~/.bashrc for ATHENA_USER to be set every time you login to your machine.