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Definitions
Athena means many things to many people: Kerberos, AFS file storage, printing, personal web space, Moira lists, etc. For the purposes of this document, we will use the following definitions:
Athena. A collection of services provided to the MIT community. This includes the Kerberos authentication system, the AFS distributed filesystem used for home directories and to distribute a vast collection of software, the Moira database system (including mailing lists), the campuswide printing infrastructure, the Hesiod name service. Athena itself is no longer an operating system per se, but numerous projects at MIT make use of the Athena infrastructure.
Debathena. A set of packages (software) for Debian-based Linux distributions (including Ubuntu) that provides access to the Athena services.
Athena 9. A set of packages (software) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Solaris that provides access to the Athena services.
WinAthena. a/k/a WIN.MIT.EDU. A suite of packages for Microsoft Windows which provide access to the Athena services.
Athena Clusters. Computing spaces located throughout campus. Each space contains anywhere from 4-112 workstations, running either Debathena or WinAthena.
Why Debathena?
Prior to Debathena, all versions of Athena were extensively customized. While they were based on existing operating systems, a significant amount of the Athena system was still built by hand, and Athena existed as a monolithic installation. Customization was possible, but not to the same extent as was possible on the underlying OS.
Athena customers had long expressed a desire for better peripheral support, more frequent upgrades, better graphical environments, and many other features that had become standard in other desktop distributions of Linux. By standardizing on Ubuntu and using upstream standards whenever possible, the Debathena Team has been able to deliver what has long been desired: a Desktop Linux environment that supports the latest hardware and software but retains all the important Athena functionality.
Who uses Athena?
Athena services are used every day by all members of the MIT community. Kerberos clients are used on Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. Print servers host not only Athena printers, but hundreds of departmental printers and SAP printers.
In addition, hundreds of students have installed Debathena on their personal computers.
Who uses the Athena clusters?
Students are the primary customers of the Athena clusters. Some classes require that homework assignments be completed using software available on the workstations in the clusters.
For more information, see Athena Cluster Usage
Resources
There are no full time staff devoted entirely to Athena. In CSS, there are approximately 1.25 FTEs devoted to Debathena support. In ISDA, there are approximately 0.75 FTEs devoted to Debathena development.
Athena servers are maintained by Server Operations staff.