Q: When I type "renew" in Debathena, why does it ask me for the password for the wrong username?

Answer

This only affects debathena-standard users.

If your Athena username differs from your Debian or Ubuntu local username, the renew command will ask for the password for your local username. You can fix this with the following command:

export ATHENA_USER=joeuser

where joeuser is your Athena username. You will need to add this command to ~/.bashrc to make this work every time you login to your machine.

If you use either the Athena dialups or SIPB Debathena dialup servers, you will probably also want to add to your ~/.ssh/config file lines such as

Host linerva linerva.mit.edu linux linux.mit.edu athena.dialup.mit.edu
    GSSAPIDelegateCredentials yes
    User joeuser

so that when you ssh to those machines, you'll not have to specify your Athena username and will automatically forward your Kerberos tickets.