I noticed when reading someone else's journal, that someone else decided to register a domain and set up a blog for someone else's hobby. I just recently set up movable type myself for the users on my system. Unsure if this will help someone else, but if it does, then great. Anyhow, here is what I did to set up my own movable type install. For starters, my requirement was that I can have http://USERNAME.journal.metachar.net/ point to the user's blog.
<lj-cut text="My setup procedure">
- Set up a wildcard dns record for my zone:
*.journal               1D IN A         216.46.74.74 ; username.journal.metachar.net

- unpacked the movabletype source into its own directory, /proj/www/local/mt/base

- created a script to set up symlinks to the base. here is the full script:
#!/bin/sh

user=$1
base=$user/base
mkdir -p $base

chown www $base
chmod 750 $base

sed -e "s/@USER@/$user/" new.cfg &gt; $base/mt.cfg
cd $base

for i in ../../base/*.cgi ../../base/*lib ../../base/schemas ../../base/tmpl
do
  ln -s $i
done

echo "create database mt_$user;" | mysql -h shelly -u root -p$dbpass mysql

echo " GRANT Select, Insert, Update, Delete, Create, Drop, Index ON \`mt_$user\`.* TO \'mvbltype_rw\'@\'%\';" | mysql -h mysql -u root -p$dbpass mysql


echo "Insert the following into /etc/httpd/httpd.conf"
cat &lt;&lt; EOF
&lt;VirtualHost *&gt;
    ServerName $user.journal.metachar.net

    DocumentRoot     "/proj/www/local/mt/$base"
    ScriptAlias  /mt "/proj/www/local/mt/$base"
    &lt;Directory       "/proj/www/local/mt/$base"&gt;
        Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    &lt;/Directory&gt;

    Alias      /static "/proj/www/local/mt/base"
    &lt;Directory         "/proj/www/local/mt/base"&gt;
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    &lt;/Directory&gt;

    &lt;Files mt-db-pass.cgi&gt;
        &lt;Limit GET&gt;
        deny from all
        &lt;/Limit&gt;
    &lt;/Files&gt;
    &lt;Files mt.cfg&gt;
        &lt;Limit GET&gt;
        deny from all
        &lt;/Limit&gt;
    &lt;/Files&gt;

&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
EOF

- That script does the following
-- Creates a base directory for the users vhost, readable only by the web user
-- Creates a custom mt.cfg for the user
-- makes a symlink for each file from the base mt source into the users dir.
-- creates a database for the user.
-- generates