How To Download Kali Linux On Usb

Greeting's, to clarify; my question is not creating a Live USB drive or a persistence partition but creating a USB with GRUB bootloader (or other) and Kali which can be used on any machine. This is similar to running other linux OS directly from USB. I am currently running Ubuntu from a pen drive. I installed the OS (Ubuntu) and the bootloader on the pen drive and I can boot off it anywhere. Here is a video explaining the same (video is not by me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLYBXOVn6ow)

Since, Kali's installer doesn't give option to select which drive to write the booloader to and directly writes on the HDD (sda1). This means even if I partition and install Kali on a pen drive since the bootloader will be installed on the machines fixed primary drive, the USB drive will fail to boot on a different device.

Kali Linux Bootable USB with Persistence and Wireless on OSX. Download the appropriate Kali Linux.iso. Download site: https://www.kali.org/downloads/. Download LinuxLive USB Creator (LiLi USB Creator). It’s free of course. > How To Install Kali Linux On USB By Using LinuxLive USB Creator. Make sure you have installed LinuxLive USB Creator. The USB to which Kali Linux can be minimum of 4 GB but it is recommended to be at least 8 GB to avoid any nastiness. So, on with the procedure.

I have two questions:

  1. Anyone has any idea how to write bootloader to a USB drive and what parameters should be given so that it boots with Kali installed on it.

  2. I am using graphic install mode for installing Kali on the USB drive, however there is no option for the install to be encrypted (Full disk encryption or at least /home folder to be encrypted). Does anyone know how can I install Kali with full disk / home folder encryption? Or enable is post install?

Thank You!

Parth ManiarParth Maniar

migrated from security.stackexchange.comApr 5 '16 at 14:28

This question came from our site for information security professionals.

5 Answers

Install Kali into a VirtualBox VM with the USB attached as the first hard drive.

You can attach the USB to VirtualBox following this guide: Using a Physical Hard Drive with a VirtualBox VM

I have done this with Ubuntu 14.04 and it works quite well. The installation is bootable on most systems.

Addendum:

Download Kali Linux Vmware Image

I'm going to elaborate, because I think this is a much overlooked solution...

I was asking myself this question over a year ago. I began with the persistence partition. To me, it felt like a convoluted, unnecessary hoop-jumping exercise to have the appearance of a system on a stick.

By installing directly to the USB stick through virtualbox, you won't have to partition a specific amount of space for the persistence volume; you are creating a fully bootable stick with full read and write access everywhere, as if the stick were a normal ssd drive.

TiberiusKirkTiberiusKirk

How To Download Kali Linux On Usb Flash Drive

@TiberiusKirk Many thanks for the idea it worked as it should.

For the record here is what worked for me on a Windows 10 machine:

  1. Connect the Pendrive delete the partition using windows disk manager (or whatever tool) .

  2. Create the Disk metafile:

  3. Attach Disk as SATA:

Note: In this example the name of the VM created in VirtualBox is 'kaliboot'.

ahmegenahmegen
How to download kali linux on usb computer

That is exactly what kali's persistence is for. Follow the guide. - or edit your question to include why you not want to use persistence.

It also covers full disk encryption of the persistence filesystem.

Note: the persistence-enabled USB drive is already bootable, as is your regular one right now.

Tobi NaryTobi Nary

Well even I have installed Kali Linux on a pendrive and not a like a live one. What i did was that first I made the drive A which I want to use as the main pendrive as a live bootable. Secondly I made another bootable the same way on pendrive no.2 Now the first and 2nd pendrive both show in the BIOS AS BOOTABLESo then I changed the priority of the pendrive 1 and then I did the install using pendrive 2. And it successfully installed Kali Linux with the grub bootloader on pendrive 1

Advice : use an old Kali Linux image. The 2018.1 is more complex than to do. You can then upgrade the old one so it's the same thing.

Bruteforce Bruteforce

Saw an interesting approach from the book, Building a Pentesting Lab for Wireless Networks.

Download this tool -- http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ -- the Universal USB Installer (UUI). Using the dropdown, select Kali Linux from the Linux Distribution List.

How To Download Kali Linux On Usb

In order to make an encrypted persistent partition, use Linux (e.g., Kali Linux) and make sure your USB disk appears with fdisk -l.

Get the space occupied by Kali image in bytes (3167)

How To Download Kali Linux On Usb Mac

du -bcm kali-linux-2.0-amd64.iso

Create the third partition on the USB drive starting right after Kali image

parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary 3167 7gb

Verify with fdisk -l that the new partition shows up. Then encrypt the new partition:

cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdb3

Open the new partition with the mapping name kali_stor

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb3 kali_stor

Build a filesystem labeled persistence on the new partition. Mount the partition

How to download kali linux on usb

mkfs.ext3 -L persistence /dev/mapper/kali_stor && e2label /dev/mapper/kali_stor persistence

mount /dev/mapper/kali_stor /mnt

Create a persistence.conf file with union

echo '/ union' > /mnt/persistence.conf

Unmount and encrypt

umount /dev/mapper/kali_stor && cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/kali_stor

Boot via USB now and check the menu for Live USB Encrypted Persistence boot option and enter your encryption passphrase

atdreatdre

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged kali-linuxusb-drive or ask your own question.

Recently I was trying to install Kali Live on a USB drive with persistence and struggled to find a tutorial online that was simple and actually worked. After some trial and error I figured out how to do it correctly and decided to make an article for anyone who is experiencing the same difficulty I did. You will need an USB with at least 8GB. Mine is 132GB, nice and large.

Step 1: Universal USB Installer

Visit the following link and download the Universal USB Installer:

Step 2: Download Latest Edition of Kali Linux

Visit the following link and download the appropriate Kali ISO.

Step 3: Create Bootable USB

After Kali is finished downloading, run Universal USB Installer and chose 'Kali Linux' from the list of Linux Distributions to install on your USB flash drive. You can alternatively chose one of the other distributions listed.

Click 'browse' to navigate through your folders. Under downloads, select the Kali Linux iso file you just finished downloading.

Indicate the drive of your USB and hit 'create'

After the process completes, you will have a live bootable Kali USB drive.

Step 4: Prepare Your Partitions

Use your new USB to boot into the system. You'll most likely have to restart your computer and hit F12 to get into the boot menu where you will select the brand name of the USB drive you're using. After it loads select 'Live USB Persistence'Go to your applications and select GParted.

This is where it can get confusing because existing references contradict each other and the results depend on what your partitions looked like to begin with. For me, there were 2 existing partitions that filled up the entire partition space: /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2. I right clicked on /dev/sda2, selected resize, and made the partition smaller. This left me with unallocated partition space.

I right clicked the newly created 'unallocated' partition space, selected 'new', selected ext4, and named the partition 'persistence'. I then applied all changes and closed GParted.

Step 5: Mount

Open your terminal and type the following:

mkdir /mnt/usb

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/usb <------ replace 'sda2' with the name of your partition. Notice it is NOT the partition I just created and named 'persistence', it's the one that was already there to begin with and had to resize.

echo '/ union' >> /mnt/usb/persistence.conf

umount /mnt/usb

Step 6: Test

To see if it worked correctly, type 'gedit Kali' then save. Restart your computer and prompt into Kali Live Persistence. Once you're loaded, click on the folder icon in your dash to dock panel. You should see a file named 'Kali' if everything was set up properly.

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