MyFunnyDev

Few nice capistrano recipes which may help you automate Ubuntu Server setup:

• ubuntu-machine
• slicehost

I’m still looking around for a stage deployment setup with Capistrano.
Here are few ideas/links I found useful.

• multi_staging_environment_for_rails_using_capistrano_and_mod_rails
• deploying-to-staging-and-production-with-capistrano
• using-capistrano-with-passenger-mod_rails/

Update:
It turned out this is pretty simple with the capistrano-ext gem:

http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/7/23/capistrano-multistage

set :default_stage, "development"
set :stages, %w(production testing development)
require 'capistrano/ext/multistage'