A Detailed Guide: How to Install Kali Linux, You might have just heard about Kali Linux without actually getting your hands-on. So today we’re going to install Kali Linux. So how to install Kali Linux in proper way without causing any troubles while installation.
There are two ways you can boot Kali Linux.
- Through Bootable USB (Live / or Installation)
- Through Bootable CD (Live / or Installation)
I have found most of the people get stuck at boot-loader or hard-drive selection issue, they get some kind of errors so i decided to make a simple tutorial on installation. Because we haven’t done any installation tutorial about Kali Linux so far.
What we need:
- Download Latest Kali Linux
- Bootable USB or CD. Tools: (https://www.linuxliveusb.com, https://unetbootin.github.io, https://www.pendrivelinux.com.)
- Download VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)
Now, How To Install Kali Linux on your Computer?
First you need to make your USB Bootable or CD. It’s very easy you just need to plugin your USB and select your Distro and version from that tools and it will start installing that distro in your USB or CD.
After making USB as Bootable stick now you need to plug-in and restart your computer after that from bios enable boot from USB or check the settings which your manufacture has provided in BIOS.
1. To start the installation process, boot the Kali Linux with your chosen installation medium CD/DVD or USB. You should be presented with the Kali Boot screen. Select either Graphical or Text mode installation. In this example, I’m going to choose graphical installation.
2. Choose your respective language for the installation and then your country location, this should be location were you live. You will also need to configure your keyboard language with correct keymap.
3. By default it will configure the Network, if you have a DHCP server from router or from our local dedicated DHCP server. If not, you have to assign the IP and host name as follows.
Here I’m going to choose manual configuration, select Configure network manually and click Continue to provide the IP address with Netmask in the format of IP Address/Netmask 192.168.0.155/24.
4. Next, provide the gateway IP address of the default router. If you don’t have a router, in this case you can leave this blank or consult your network administrator to configure it. Here I am using my gateway router IP address 192.168.0.1.
5. Now enter the IP address of your Name Server (DNS), if you don’t want to use any name servers, you can leave this option has blank. Here in my case, I’ve local DNS, so here I am placing my DNS Server’s IP address as my name server.
6. Next, enter the hostname for your Kali Linux installation, by default it set to Kali as hostname, but here I’ve used the same hostname as “Kali“, but you can choose whatever you want…
7. Next, set the domain name if you have one or leave blank and click Continue to move forward.
8. On the next screen, you need to set a password for root user, it’s always a good practice to use mixture of letters, numbers and special characters in passwords and should be changed on regular intervals to protect your servers.
9. Configure the clock to match with the your chosen location, if you connected to internet this will set automatically as per your chosen location or set manually as described below.
10. Now it’s time to partition our disk for installation. Choosing LVM will be good option, If you need to extend more space in near future. Here i have selected Guided-Use enter disk and setup LVM.
11. Choose the Disk from the list, here we have only one disk to choose, click continue to move forward for the installation.
12. For simplifying our installation and easy to setup, we can choose All files in one partition. This will be recommended for new users to Kali. For advance user’s they can choose manually for separate partition for each /home, /var, /usr, etc.
13. Before the LVM configured, the proper partitioning scheme has to be written to disk and these changes cannot be reverted back. So, make sure to take backup, if you have any or choose YES to confirm the changes to the disk and configure LVM.
14. Here, you will get a overview of your current partition layout and mount points, which configured automatically from the installer. If you wish to change any settings, you can or else select Finish partition and write changes to disk and choose continue to move forward for the next step.
15. Partitions are created and asking to format the disk by using below file-system types. With root and swap. Choose YES and click on Continue. This will start to copy the files from media to disk and get install Kali Linux.
16. After copying files, you will be asked to configuring package manager. In this step, we’re going to configure the mirror network to get the packages for the future installations. If you don’t have a internet connection, you can choose NO, to depend on media repo, if you choose a network mirror to YES, it will get prepared to use the available nearby repository mirror.
In some organizations they have there local mirror, in such case, you can enter the information of your local mirror URL here, or else just click on Continue to move forward for the further installation.
17. After configuring package manager, it will download and install packages from chosen mirror, and then choose YES to install the GRUB boot loader in our system.
18. After installation completes, click on Continue to finish installation, and make sure to remove the installation media, before rebooting the machine.
19. After rebooting machine, you will be prompted with Kali Linux boot menu, from the list choose Kali GNU/Linux without recovery mode to boot normally to system.
20. After system booting, you will get the login screen for Kali Linux, use the default username as ‘root’ and password which you’ve set during the installation time at #step 8.
Updating Kali Linux from Older Version to Latest
To upgrade Kali from older versions to newer, you can use the simple apt-get commands. We don’t have to download the ISO files and have a fresh new installation, just issue the following commands to upgrade the running system into newer version.