How do I setup my server with rvm and thin running on nginx?

I've been trying to piece together information from a bunch of different articles, but I always run into problems. This is a learning experience, for now, but I'll eventually be running rails in production on this server, so I want to get it right (and also understand it).

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 right now.

I setup a separate user, put them in the sudoer file, install rvm and its dependencies, install gems: rails, rake, bundler, and thin. Following this, I'm supposed to run

$ sudo thin install

I can't run sudo thin install. I get command not found. rvm and gems don't work either-- which I'm assuming is because I'm running it as root, and these commands are only available in my local environment.

If I run just

thin install

I don't have the permissions to access /etc/init.d

Could someone explain what I need to do to set this up correctly? I'm considering not using rvm, but I would still like to understand it. I need thin because I'll be using eventmachine.

--
Luke