When installing a "minimal" system there's an obvious error that happens...
you haven't installed a "base" system so many commands you are used to are missing...
e.g. if you do a centos 5.3 minimal install you'll still need to run:
yum install wget elinks sudo make gcc
yum install kernel ? maybe necessary to update your kernel to the newest? yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) yum install kernel-headers-$(uname -r)
export KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)-x86_64
TRYING to install VirtualBox will reveal one of those errors:
Basename error operand missing ...yuck
the answer is to very carefully read the error message, which has the word "which" in it...
yum install which
And voila, error fixed... so if you're seeing that error it probably means you're missing a simple but vital program (e.g. make, gcc, which...)