Just installed Etherpad on our openvz server. Having created an openvz guest for the purpose, running Debian Squeeze, installing Etherpad proved no more difficult than adding the Etherpad repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

$ sudo su
# echo "deb http://apt.etherpad.org all ." >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install etherpad

All the requisite dependencies were brought in. Unfortunately the etherpad server did not start after installation, and I had to do the following commands:

# sed -i.orig 's/local/share/' /etc/init.d/etherpad

Then it started perfectly simply with /etc/init.d/etherpad start.

To make this happen automatically on boot:

# update-rc.d etherpad defaults

If you would prefer to use openjdk than sun-java (and you should), then google for “etherpad openjdk”. Sorry to say I was in too much of a hurry on this occasion.

References

• Etherpad
• http://sis.bthstudent.se/2011/525/how-to-install-etherpad-on-debian-lenny/