After reinstalling mldonkey-server on my new edgy installation, it appeared that mldonkey-server was not starting on boot up :s.

mldonkey-server was working fine, as I could start it with:

$sudo /etc/init.d/mldonkey-server start

but on reboot, the daemon was not launched :( .
Checking /var/log/boot, I could find the following message:

Starting MLDonkey: mlnet Could not guess $HOME environnement variable: provide a --chdir or $HOME

It actually appeared that --chdir was properly set, so I gave a try to setting up $HOME.
If you are running into the same trouble, get the patch attached to this post, then:

$cd /etc/init.d
$sudo patch -p0 < /path/to/mldonkey.patch.txt

And on the next reboot, it should be working :).
Hope this helped.

A bug report has been made on launchpad [2]