Let's start with the installation of Kali Linux in a virtual machine.
Here's the approach for the installation process.
Acquire Kali Linux from the kali.org/downloads site at this URL. Here
you'll find a table with various download options.
Download the Kali Linux 64‑Bit (Installer) image.
Be sure to verify the signature.
Create a new virtual machine in your virtual machine manager tool of choice.
If you don't have one, I would recommend starting with VirtualBox.
That's what I will use for the demonstration later.
Once the virtual machine is created and configured,
we will run through the installation process for Kali
Linux. Kali can run under a variety of specifications for
the virtual hardware it needs.
Here is a set of specifications to get us started.
You can adjust these as needed for your system. Kali is pretty big,
considering all the tools that are installed by default. Accounting
for updates down the road and data collected during testing, you may
want to start with 20 GB of disk space.
Four gigabytes of memory should be a good balance between what Kali needs and
what free memory you have on your workstation or laptop. Feel free to adjust
as needed. Two virtual CPUs should be plenty,
but you can adjust this one up if the VM seems slow. I usually
choose four. One‑hundred and twenty eight megabytes of video memory
should allow the graphic components of Kali to work and give you
more options for screen sizes.
A bridged network adapter should allow your Kali virtual
machine a direct connection to the network without
interference from the host operating system.
This is needed for most of the testing we will do.
I assume that you can configure the virtual machine for
Kali based on the VM specifications here.
There are other courses in the Pluralsight library to help if you need.
Now I will step through the Kali installation process.
We will use the graphical installer to install Kali Linux.
As we go along through the configuration options, I will
talk a little bit about each.
Let's get started.
Once we start the virtual machine with the Kali ISO image in the virtual drive,
it will show the boot menu.
We want to install the OS on the VM, so pick the Graphical Install option.
The next few screens are related to languages.
Select the one you need.
I will use English.
Choose a location and keyboard type.
The installer will load packages needed for the installation.
Here we need to configure the network interfaces.
Pick the primary interface.
If you have DHCP on your network, then this should just work.
I will select the first one here.
Next, we need a hostname.
I will use kali for mine.
I will leave the Domain name blank,
though. I will create a standard user using my full name here
and my preferred username and password.
Here we select our time zone for the system clock.
Next, we have to configure the disk where all the files will be installed.
We will choose to use the whole disk since it's only for
this virtual machine. Select the only disk.
We should put all of our files in one partition.
Let's finish the partitioning. Here we need to select Yes
to complete the changes to the disk.
After partitioning the disk,
the installer begins loading the base operating system files.
This is rather long,
so I will speed through this part. Before loading the other
software packages, we could choose a web proxy.
Assuming there isn't one, leave it blank.
Now the package manager will load some software packages for Kali.
This takes a while, so again, we'll speed through this part. Here we can
choose some additional options for a desktop environment.
I will accept the defaults.
Here's another long process,
so speeding through it. GRUB is the boot loader which
manages booting the system from disk.
We will install it and select the virtual disk.
Yet more packages are installed here, and we'll give it a little speed.
Well, it took a while, but now we have reached the end.
Selecting Continue will reboot the machine into our new Kali Linux installation.
We have successfully installed Kali Linux on the virtual machine.
Before we use Metasploit, we need to configure a few options in Kali.
We'll discuss those next. Congratulations! We configured the virtual
machine and installed the base Kali Linux system.
Now we have a great platform and foundation for penetration testing.