In the last post we looked at creating the VM required to get the Kali install to start going. Today we are going to look at installing Kali on that shiny new VM. Let’s look into how to start putting the Kali into Kali Linux VirtualBox VM.
Where in the World is Kali ISO
As with any good VM, we need an OS, specifically a Kali Linux OS. The method I am going to show uses an ISO file to install the OS. If you are unfamiliar with an ISO file, think of it as a CD or DVD program disk in a single file. It’s a virtual CD.
First grab the ISO from Kali. it should be in the download section
Wow, that is a lot of downloads and we have not even scrolled down yet. What we are looking for is the Kali Linux 64 bit image. When you find it use the HTTP or the Torrent to download it. If you don’t know what a Torrent is then press HTTP.
This is a big file so it is going to take some time to download. Go play with the dog, brush your teeth or play a rousing game of Guillotine with your friends.
Great We Have the ISO. What Do We Do with It?
When it finishes, you will have about a 3.4 GB file. Let open up VirtualBox and select our Kali Test machine from the last post.
Before you do something stupid like powering up the Kali Test VM, just stop. Take a deep breath and make sure you have selected it. If it is blue like the image above then you have successfully selected it. Next press the “Settings” button in the right pane.
Now we have access to the Kali Test – Settings dialog.
In settings, we want to set the ISO as a CD-ROM. In the left column we will need to select “Storage”.
Now we are at the Kali Test’s Storage settings and we can get our ISO going. In the “Controller:IDE” -> “Empty”, select the little CD icon to the far right.
This will give you a list of options. Since you have not done a Kali install before you will select “Choose Virtual Optical Disk File…” For me I could select the kali-linux-2019.1a-amd64.iso since that is file I want. I won’t for sake of this post but I could. This is a list of recent ISO’s.
Navigate to the download location. Mine was located in F:\d\d so I went there and selected kali-linux-2019.1a-amd64.iso. Finally, press the Open button at the bottom.
After we selected the file, it should appear where the Empty used to be located in the Kali Test Storage dialog.
Press the “OK” button to close the “Kali Test – Settings” dialog. We can now see that under storage in our summary screen the optical drive now contains the kali-linux-2019.1a-amd64.iso file.
We are now ready to press the”Start” button.
So What’s Next?
Since this post is getting more than a little long in the tooth and we are at a great stopping point, I think I am going to break setting up Kali Linux into out into multiple posts. I am thinking this one, the Setting up the Kali Linux VirtualBox Virtual Machine and another, Installing Kali Linux on VirtualBox.