This is simple installation instruction. it can be done as unprivileged user (you might want sudo to root for some commands - but you don't really have to - you'll just need to provide full length paths)

you need to have:

  subversion (if you want trunk version instead of last stable)
  java - jdk and sdk
  ant 1.7 - curently not in debian etch repositories so i'm compiling it from source

Install Apache Ant Ant 1.7:

  wget http://apache.mirror.transip.nl/ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz
  tar -zxf apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz
  sudo mv apache-ant-1.7.0 /opt/ant # you don't need  this
  export ANT_HOME=/opt/ant
  sudo ln -s /opt/ant/bin/ant /usr/bin/ant # shortcut - you sould now be able to use ant

now let's get red5

  svn co http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk red5

  #or

  wget http://dl.fancycode.com/red5/0.6.3/src/red5-0.6.3.tar.gz
  tar -zxf red5-0.6.3.tar.gz
  mv red5-0.6.3 red5

now we have red5 directory containing red5 sources.

next step is compilation - before that we might want to provide proper patches to java and ant

  export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/
  export ANT_HOME=/opt/ant/ # or other directory if you don't have root

now let's compile

  cd red5
  /opt/ant/bin/ant prepare 
  /opt/ant/bin/ant dist

now directory “dist” contains compiled and ready to run server

  cd dist 
  sh red5.sh

  # or (no idea if it works - but someone changed it - so i guess maybe it works
  # ant server

red5 should now run http server on port 5080 and rtmp service on port 1935

so let's navigate to:

http://localhost:5080/demos/port_tester.swf

and check if everything is working. for me it's, and I hope for you it'll work too.

The Debian tutorial was pretty confusing, and I hope I made it more clear.