beanstalkd is a promising in-memory queuing system in the mold of memcached (minimal configuration, just works) with client libraries in a variety of languages. The following worked for me for installing it on Ubuntu 8.04:
mkdir ~/packages
# pre-requisite: libevent.
cd ~/packages
wget http://monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.8-stable.tar.gz
tar zxvf http://monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.8-stable.tar.gz
cd libevent-1.4.8-stable
./configure
make
sudo make install
# add /usr/local/lib to your load library path so beanstalkd can find libevent
vi ~/.bashrc (add the following somewhere near the end):
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRYARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
(exit vi)
source ~/.bashrc
# need git in order to get latest code for beanstalkd
cd ~/packages
sudo apt-get install git-core
# grab beanstalkd
git clone http://xph.us/src/beanstalkd.git
cd beanstalkd
make
# now you should be able to start the beanstalkd daemon
./beanstalkd -d -p 99988
# get the python beanstalkd client
cd ~/packages
svn checkout http://pybeanstalk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ pybeanstalk-read-only
cd pybeanstalk-read-only
sudo python setup.py install
# get pyyaml, a pre-requisite for the python beanstalkd client
cd ~/packages
wget http://pyyaml.org/download/pyyaml/PyYAML-3.06.tar.gz
tar zxvf PyYAML-3.06.tar.gz
cd PyYAML-3.06
sudo python setup.py install
# open two different shells (or use screen) type the following in the two different shells:
cd ~/packages/pybeanstalk-read-only/examples
python simple_clients.py producer localhost 99988
python simple_clients.py consumer localhost 99988