These instructions should work for Ubuntu 11.10

Installation: 

Follow instructions from
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8175393/trouble-compiling-and-installing-cantera-python-module

    First step is to install any dependencies. This is handled by
    apt-get: sudo apt-get install subversion g++ gfortran
    python2.6-dev python-numpy libsundials* graphviz

    Next step is to get the source for cantera. This can be done by
    either downloading the cantera-1.8.0-beta-tar.gz from the cantera
    site our checking the latest version from svn 
svn checkout http://cantera.googlecode.com/svn/cantera18/trunk/ cantera

    Change to the cantera directory (either the svn checkout or the untarred/gunzipped cantera-1.8.0)

    Edit the file named preconfig and make sure the following lines are included by commenting/editing
    This step has been completed in this git repo.  
    PYTHON_PACKAGE=${PYTHON_PACKAGE:="full"}
    USE_NUMPY=${USE_NUMPY:="y"}
    PYTHON_CMD=${PYTHON_CMD:="/usr/local/EPD/bin/python"}
    This step has been completed in this git repo.  

Then in a terminal run the following commands:
./preconfig
make
sudo make install
source ~/setup_cantera

If every thing went well you should be able to import the Cantera module in python:
python
>>>from Cantera import *