Not a casual job...
Install notes

rvm install jruby-1.7.16 --2.0 doesn't work. RVM looks in a config file to see about 'know-strings', and jruby-1.7.16 isn't one of them. It apears that jruby-1.7.22 is the only one it finds. So, change that.
Also, the $JAVA_HOME it sets isn't right. Set it in .bashrc, like this:
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64
PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64
then, do 'source ~/.bashrc' to let your tty know about the change

Also, javac is not installed when RVM does the java install. I installed java-default to compensate, but it adds ~200MB to your install base - there's probably a more economical method of installing javac.

Setting up postgresql: instructions say 'psql -d template1 -U postgres'. But that won't work. Do this instead: 'sudo -u postgres psql -d template1'

Configuring Panoptes: seems to have changed slightly, or docs are bad. Filenames now use a .hudson extension and include test and development settings.
The db:migrate command I change from rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=development to rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test because the .hudson config files ref'd development and test - with test having the localhost ref from docs
Running the db migrate command fails like this: no such file to load -- bundler/setup
It's because bundler isn't installed, so: gem install bundler
Run rake again: git://github.com/edpaget/cequel.git (at update-cql-version) is not yet checked out. Run `bundle install` first.
Ran bundle install
Then got this:
======================
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - /home/hcmc/.rvm/gems/jruby-1.7.22/gems/jruby-kafka-1.0.0.beta-java/deps.lst
An error occurred while installing jruby-kafka (1.0.0.beta), and Bundler cannot
continue. Make sure that `gem install jruby-kafka -v '1.0.0.beta'` succeeds before bundling.
======================
So, did this:

then ran rake db:migrate... again. Kept getting same error. Online suggestion=move on and see if the problem matters. I did that and MAYBE it worked.
Got further errors suggesting that I needed more gems, so I did what it said.
Stuck here