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Sometime ago I bought a VM and it had Debian Squeeze minimum installation, it was only using 2.8GB space.

Now I bought again from another provider but the OS they installed used 6.8GB.

My question is how can I bring this down to bare minimum? How can I uninstall unnecessary software?

Edit: I only intend it to be a storage server.

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This is not really answerable. What do you consider unnecessary software? It depends on what you need to do. A minimal debian install does not even need a graphical environment and can take much much less than 2.8GB. So, what is it that you want to be able to do with the VM? – terdon Mar 19 at 14:58
@terdon I only intend it to be a file storage server. I also don't need GUI, I can just SSH. – IMB Mar 19 at 15:05
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Please update your question with your exact requirements. How will the server be connected? Do you need nfs, autofs? I guess you need ssh. Do you need any database software? A quick and easy first step would be to remove the GNOME meta package if installed. – terdon Mar 19 at 15:09

closed as not constructive by terdon, Renan, Nifle, CharlieRB, oKtosiTe Mar 19 at 19:40

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If you want to re-install you can download the netinst from debian.org. It contains only the files necessary to start up the installation, you can then select only what you want to install. You'll need to be able to boot something up on the virtual machine, and have admin privileges.

If you want to uninstall applications you consider unnecessary you'll need root privileges. If there is a graphical environment just go to System > Administration > Software Center, select Installed Software and uninstall whatever you don't need - be careful not to remove anything that is needed in order for the VM to work.

If there isn't a graphical environment you can issue aptitude search '~i' to get a list of packages installed (the ones automatically installed have an A before the name). Then aptitude remove package_name to remove the packages you don't want - again, all super user (root).

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