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.
Visit the MIT Knowledge Base for step-by-step instructions to install Debathena. At a minimum, you'll need to decide which metapackage to install.
Subscribe to the mailing list, so that we can send you announcements about changes in the project and important security upgrades. This list is very low-traffic, receiving 2-3 messages per semester at most. You can subscribe using WebMoira (authentication required) or with the following command:
blanche debathena-announce -a $USER
Debathena has an interactive command-line installer that walks you through the installation process. You can run the Debathena installer by running the following commands as root:
wget -N https://debathena.mit.edu/install-debathena.sh; sh install-debathena.sh
NOTE: Older versions of wget may not correctly verify the server certificate for debathena.mit.edu. In that case, you should change https to http in the URL above, and verify the sha256sum of the installer before running it.
While using the method above is the best way to get Debathena, we do support other options for advanced users, including manual installation, PXE installation, and some additional metapackages for advanced users.
If you run into a problem, or you aren't sure how to use your new Debathena installation, the first step is to checkout the Debathena category in the MIT Knowledge Base.
You can contact the IS&T Helpdesk at helpdesk@mit.edu, or contact the
Debathena development team at
debathena@mit.edu. You can
also reach us on Zephyr -c sipb -i debathena.