Going from vanilla Ubuntu server to (almost) full install of vanilla ruby 1.9.2, gem, rails, passenger, nginx, mysql, git, etc.

gistfile1.txt

login as root or sudo -s..

1) apt-get update
2) apt-get upgrade 
(probably need a reboot after this)
3) apt-get install gcc bison zlibc build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5 libreadline5-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev git-core mysql-server libmysqlclient-dev
4) wget ruby source to local directory
5) tar -zxvf downloaded file
6) cd newly_created_ruby_directory
7) ./configure 
8) make && make install  (installs to /usr/local/bin/) etc
9) gem install rails
10) gem install passenger
11) passenger package-runtime   
12) gem install mysql2
13) passenger-nginx-install stuff needed here (MORE details required)

Optional:-
apt-get install brightbox-server-tools

At this point, add new user account, etc...