yum exits in the middle
The problem is this VPS seems to be an OpenVZ template from HyperVM. The only way to make it work was to disable i386 packages since this was an x64 kernel. That shouldn't be necessary but it was the only way to make yum stop quitting after the first package or two. I couldn't find any issue by checking the logs either.
echo y|yum install vim-minimal telnet expect jwhois net-tools slocate iptables elinks gawk
L........
I've never understood how to enable and disable services for different run levels in Debian based distros, it's just weird, annoying and doesn't make sense. I much prefer chkconfig from RHEL.
Just install the package called 'rcconf' and be done with it. rcconf makes things easy for you.
apt-get install rcconf
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done........