Etherpad was opensourced by google, and has some generic installation instructions. Here’s the translation for Ubuntu Karmic Koala (release 9.10):

Install the prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.1 mercurial sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre sun-java6-bin
cd /tmp
wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.12.tar.gz/from/http://mysql.he.net/
wget http://www.scala-lang.org/downloads/distrib/files/scala-2.7.7.final.tgz
sudo mkdir -p /opt
cd /opt
sudo tar xvzf /tmp/mysql*tar.gz
sudo tar xvzf /tmp/scala*.tgz
sudo ln -s scala* scala

Create an etherpad system user:

sudo adduser --system etherpad
sudo -u etherpad bash

Add this to ~etherpad/.bashrc:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
export JAVA="$JAVA_HOME/bin/java"
export SCALA_HOME=/opt/scala
export SCALA=$SCALA_HOME/bin/scala
export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$SCALA_HOME/bin:$PATH"
export MYSQL_CONNECTOR_JAR="/opt/mysql-connector-java-5.1.12/mysql-connector-java-5.1.12-bin.jar"

Check out the source and install the mysql database:

cd ~etherpad
hg clone https://etherpad.googlecode.com/hg/ etherpad
mysql -u root -p -e "create database etherpad"
mysql -u root -p -e "grant all privileges on etherpad.* to 'etherpad'@'localhost' identified by 'password'; flush privileges;"
cd ~etherpad/etherpad/trunk/etherpad
bin/rebuildjar.sh

Compile:

cd ~etherpad/etherpad/trunk/etherpad
bin/rebuildjar.sh

Configure the domain of your server

• Add the domain name of your server to the SUPERDOMAIN config in ~etherpad/etherpad/trunk/etherpad/src/etherpad/globals.js
• Remember to add port forwarding for port 9000 on your router.

Start Etherpad on @reboot with cron:

Run sudo crontab -u etherpad -e and paste this in:

MAILTO=root
# m h  dom mon dow   command
@reboot cd ~etherpad/etherpad/trunk/etherpad ; bin/run-local.sh

Update May 10, 2010

I just found Nuba Princigalli‘s post which has etherpad pro instructions as well.

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