Reference

I relied on the information and code here: https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite/wiki/How-to-deploy-Etherpad-Lite-as-a-service

Summary

Etherpad-lite is web-based synchronous collaboration software for writers and coders. It is extensible. It is embeddable. It tracks revisions. It can be secured. This script is intended to install Etherpad-Lite on to a Raspberry Pi running Raspian/Raspbian. It relies on bash, access to internet, and root privileges.

What it Does

• Checks to make sure it's being run with root privileges
• Uses variables with which user can customize a little
• Uses package manager to download dependencies.
• Uses git clone to download source to target directory
• Creatings settings file from template and configures for basic use (no mysql, for example)
• Checks for npm and node dependencies and downloads as necessary
• Creates a system user and a group named etherpad-lite and grants permissions as necessary
• Sets up daemon to start server at start up.

Usage

1. Download the script. It's available here on github using git. You'll need git later, so: sudo apt-get install git. Then use git clone git://github.com/ghoulmann/raspi-etherpad-lite.git. Or you can download and then unzip Name of file.zip.
2. Edit install_raspi_etherpad-lite with the text editor you're most comfortable with. Nano, leafpad, vi, emacs will all do. e.g. nano ./install_raspi_etherpad-lite. Edit the values for the port and the target directory: the defaults work, but the flexibility is there if you want it.
3. Run the script with root privileges. It should already be executeable. If not, sudo chmod +x ./install_raspi_etherpad-lite . Then do sudo ./install_raspi_etherpad-lite .
4. 2013/10/20 : removal of npm and node install from distribution, in order to use node v0.8.25 as etherpad-lite require v0.8.x minimum. -- DavidDelon

The etherpad-lite service should start automatically next time you boot. If, however, you'd like to start it immediately, do sudo service etherpad-lite start.