Base system for headless servers (no xorg)

Distribution: Debian stable, Platform: amd64
Based on "businesscard CD image" from http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
plus everything that I consider important for a server base system

Single XFS root partition + swap partition

User "user" has full sudo rights
(similar to Ubuntu, but using root password)
https://odoepner.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/set-up-sudo-on-debian/

Default username/password: root/root, user/user
Change to something more secure using 
sudo passwd 
sudo passwd user

Locale: en_CA 
Change via: sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Timezone: Atlantic
Change via: sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

APT mirror: mirror.its.dal.ca
Use closest Debian mirror instead:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Replace "mirror.its.dal.ca" with your favorite from
http://www.debian.org/mirror/list
Then sudo apt-get update

List of all installed packages: 
sudo dpkg --get-selections | sort > /tmp/packages.list
less /tmp/packages.list

For newer packages for Debian stable try official backports:
http://backports-master.debian.org/Instructions/

ssh connections to the VM have been enabled like this:
VBoxManage modifyvm "debian-stable-amd64-minimal" --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,1111,,22"
This means you can ssh to localhost port 1111 from the host.
See http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html for more networking details.