This is an attempt at a guide and a few helpful pointers for those who don't care to use the prepackaged NAV for Debian. The versions used here are Debian Etch and NAV 3.3.0-rc1.

Install NAV's runtime dependencies:

sudo aptitude install perl python java-virtual-machine apache2-mpm-prefork \
                      cricket php4-gd php4-pgsql postgresql-8.1 tomcat5.5 \
                      libapache2-mod-php4 libapache2-mod-python libpgjava \ 
                      libpg-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl libdbd-pg-perl \
                      libsnmp1.4-java libsnmp-session-perl python-pysnmp2 \
                      logrotate python-cheetah python-egenix-mxdatetime \
                      python-forgethtml python-forgetsql python-gammu \
                      python-ipy python-ldap python-psycopg python-rrd \
                      makepasswd wwwconfig-common samba-common

And, of course, NAV's build time dependencies:

sudo aptitude install FIXME

tar xvzf nav-3.3.0_rc1.tar.gz
cd nav-3.3.0_rc1
autoconf
./configure
export CLASSPATH=/usr/share/java/libsnmp-1.4.jar:/usr/share/java/postgresql.jar:/usr/share/java/servlet-api.jar
make
sudo make install