Does this help? http://gregsomers.com/blog/2013/07/30/install-apache-solr-44-on-ubuntu-1204-with-tomcat-7-and-mysql-data-import

I spent a couple nights working through all the blog posts and stackoverflow pages I could find. I pieced together all the working tutorials to create this one: http://simiancreative.com/2013/09/22/tomcat7-solr-4-4-ubuntu-12-04/

This only answers part of your question. I do not have examples of indexing mysql tables. I plan on doing a tutorial on rails and sunspot integration for a production environment.

thanks for the answer ross it helps a lot.