Setting up a minimal Debian for VM use

I’ve been just installing a Linux in a VM again (using VirtualBox, tested with 1.5.6). As a minimal system, I choose Debian (with minimal I mean that you don’t get much unused stuff, it boots fast and the disk usage is reasonable. I know that DSL or whatever would be smaller, this is just about getting a decent work system up and running quickly). Here’s a small howto:

1. Get the Debian Net-Installer from Debian.org (180 MiB)
2. Install debian, when it comes to package setup deselect “Desktop system“

3. After reboot, install (using apt-get install):

   • x-window-system-core
   • kde-core
   • kdm
   • g++

4. Reboot

5. Install the VM additions, but install the kernel headers first using: apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
6. Reboot, notice that the network doesn’t seem to work any longer
7. Run dhcpd (as root)

Done. This gives you a quite small debian installation which works fine and uses really little disk space (1.10 GiB including the swap-file).

Update: dhcpd has to be run as root in case no network connection is found.