Installation guide for the new Kali Linux system

The Kali Linux system can be said to be the best out-of-the-box Linux distribution for security testing. Many of the tools available under Kali can be installed in most Linux distributions, and the offensive security team has invested a lot of time and effort in the development of the Kali system to refine this Linux distribution for penetration testing and security audits.

Kali Linux is a security-oriented release version of Debian. The system is known for its pre-installed hundreds of well-known security tool software.

Kali even in the field of information security there is a higher-content certification known as "Kali penetration testing (pentesting with Kali)" certification. The applicant for the certification must successfully invade multiple computers within a difficult 24 hours, and then complete the penetration test report in another 24 hours and send it to the security personnel of offensive. The person who successfully passes the exam will be awarded the OSCP certificate.

This installation guide and future articles are intended to help you familiarize yourself with the use of Kali Linux systems and some of these tools.

Use the tools under Kali carefully, as some of these tools will cause damage to your computer system if used improperly. Please use the information contained in all Kali series articles in a legal way.

System Requirements

The Kali system has some of the most basic requirements and recommendations for hardware. Depending on the purpose of the user, you can make a higher configuration. This article assumes that the reader wants to install Kali as the only operating system on the computer.

At least 10GB of disk space; it is highly recommended to allocate more storage space.

At least 512MB of memory; Hopefully there's more memory, especially in the graphical interface.

Supports USB or CD/DVD boot mode.

Kali Linux System ISO Image

To create a USB boot tool using the DD command

This article assumes that you can use a USB device to boot the installation system. Be careful to use 4GB or 8GB USB devices whenever possible, and all data on it will be deleted.

The author of this article encountered a problem while installing a USB device with a larger capacity, but others should still be able to. In any case, the following installation steps will erase the data from the USB device.

Be sure to back up all your data before you start. The USB boot device used to install the Kali Linux system will be created on another machine.

The first step is to obtain the Kali Linux system ISO image file. This guide will be installed using the latest version of the Kali Linux system containing the Enlightenment desktop environment.

Enter the following command under terminal to obtain this version of the ISO image file.

$ cd ~/downloads $ wget-c Http://cdimage.kali.org/kali-2016.2/kali-linux-e17-2016.2-amd64.iso

The above two commands will download the Kali Linux ISO image file to the current user's Downloads directory.

The next step is to write the ISO image to the USB device to start the installer. We can do this using the DD command in the Linux system. First, the USB device can be found under the LSBLK command.

$ lsblk

Confirm the USB device name in the Linux system

To make sure that the USB device name is/DEV/SDC, you can use the DD tool to write the Kali system image to a USB device.

$ sudo dd if=~/downloads/kali-linux-e17-2016.2-amd64.iso OF=/DEV/SDC

Note: The above command requires root access, so use the sudo command or log in with the root account to execute the command. This command removes all data from the USB device. Make sure that you have backed up the required data.

Once the ISO image file is completely copied to the USB device, the next step is to install the Kali Linux system.

Installing the Kali Linux system

1. First, plug the USB device into the computer where you want to install the Kali operating system, and boot the system from the USB device. As soon as you successfully boot the system from the USB device, you will see the following graphical interface, select "Install" or "Graphical install" option.

This guide will be installed using the "graphical install" method.

Kali Linux Boot Menu

2. The following interfaces will ask the user to select locale information, such as language, country, and keyboard layout.

After the selection is complete, the user will be prompted to enter the hostname and domain name information. After entering the appropriate environment information, click Continue installation.

Set the hostname of the Kali Linux system

Set the domain name of the Kali Linux system

3. After the hostname and domain name settings are complete, the root user's password needs to be set. Do not forget the password.

Set Kali Linux System user Password

4. After the password is set up, the installation step will prompt the user to select the time zone and stay in the hard disk partition interface.

If Kali Linux is the only operating system on this computer, the simplest option is to use "Guided–use entire Disk" and select the storage device you need to install Kali.

Choose the Kali Linux system installation Type

Select Kali Linux installation disk

5. The next step will prompt the user to partition on the storage device. In most cases, we can install the entire system within a partition.

Installing the Kali Linux system on a partition

6. The final step is to prompt the user to confirm that all changes are written to the host hard disk. Note that when you click Confirm, all data on the entire disk will be emptied.

Confirm Disk partition Changes

7, once the partition changes are confirmed, the installation package will copy the file installation process. After the installation is complete, you need to set up a network image source to obtain the package and system updates. If you want to use Kali's software library, be sure to turn this feature on.

Configuring the Kali Linux Package Manager

8. After selecting the network image source, you will be asked to install the Grub boot program. Again, this article assumes that you only have a unique Kali Linux operating system installed on your PC.

Select "Yes" on this screen and the user will need to select the hard drive boot device to which the bootstrapper information will be written.

Installing the Grub Boot program

Select the partition where the Grub bootstrapper is installed

9. When the Grub installation is complete, the system will alert the user to restart the machine to enter the newly installed Kali Linux system.

Kali Linux System Installation Complete

10. Because this guide uses enlightenment as the desktop environment for Kali Linux Systems, it is initiated into the shell environment by default.

Log in to the system using the root account and the password set during the previous installation to run the Enlightenment desktop environment.

After successful login, enter the command startx into the Enlightenment desktop environment.

# STARTX

Kali Linux into the Enlightenment desktop environment

When you first enter the Enlightenment desktop environment, it will ask the user to make some preference configuration before running the desktop environment.

Kali Linux Enlightenment Desktop

At this point, you have successfully installed the Kali Linux system and are ready to use it. Follow-up articles we will explore some useful tools in the Kali system and how to use these tools to detect host and network security conditions.

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