Starting with an Ubuntu Oneiric box, install Riak:

wget http://downloads.basho.com/riak/CURRENT/riak_1.1.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i riak_1.1.1-1_amd64.deb

You need to make a few changes to Riak's app.config.

sudo sed -e '/^ {riak_kv/ a {delete_mode, immediate},' \
         -e 's/storage_backend, riak_kv_bitcask_backend/storage_backend, riak_kv_eleveldb_backend/' \
         -e '/^ {riak_search/,+2 s/enabled, false/enabled, true/' -i.bak /etc/riak/app.config

Now we're ready to start Riak:

sudo /etc/init.d/riak start

tools/setup_virtualenv.sh will pull in all the necessary dependencies and should let you run the test suite:

tools/setup_virtualenv.sh
.venv/bin/python setup.py nosetests

You can start Surveilr this easily:

paster serve surveilr/defaults.cfg