Linux – Cutting Ubuntu to the bone for Virtualbox VM

I've been looking around for a Linux variant which will install only the software I need rather than everything Ubuntu (for example) puts in by default. This is to create a virtual machine in Virtualbox which has bash, apache, python, perl, SQLite, openssh and a few other programs but nothing else. I'd prefer to go with Ubuntu if possible but another modern distro would do as well (I like using apt-get and yum rather than downloading/compiling etc).

So far, I've tried:

• SuseStudio.com, which is probably the best so far.
• Ubuntu 9.10, by pressing F4 to get the boot options on the install disc, but there is no minimal installation (oops! had the alternate disc instead of the server disc).
• Arch Linux, slightly confusing install procedure but I might go back and try again.
• Gentoo, started well but fairly soon the HD on the virtual machine went to 2Gb, even before the installation had started in earnest (I'd partitioned the disks is all).

I realise there are various "small" Linuxes around like Puppy, Feather, DSL, etc, but they seem to be aimed at desktop users or as a techie's toolkit, and I want a small-as-possible server distro which can be managed with tools like apt or yum or similar.