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

While still in the NAV source code directory.

• follow doc/sql/README
• Edit /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf, change ident sameuser into md5 for local users connecting through UNIX sockets (except the postgres user)
• sudo invoke-rc.d postgresql-8.1 reload

Put this in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-nav:

ServerName nav.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html index.php index.cgi index.py
AccessFileName .htaccess
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

DocumentRoot /usr/local/nav/apache/webroot
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory "/usr/local/nav/apache/webroot">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI 
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

LogLevel warn

<Location />
    # Let NAV authorize all access to this location
    PythonHeaderParserHandler nav.web 
    PythonDebug on
</Location>

Then run the following commands:

sudo a2dissite default
sudo a2ensite default-nav
sudo a2enmod php4
sudo a2enmod mod_python
sudo invoke-rc.d apache2 force-reload