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4.4. ARM Installations
Kali Linux runs on a wide variety of ARM-based devices (laptops, embedded computers, and devel- oper boards, for example) but you cannot use the traditional Kali installer on these devices since they often have specific requirements in terms of kernel or boot loader configuration.
To make those devices more accessible to Kali users, Offensive Security developed scripts to build disk images2 that are ready for use with various ARM devices. They provide those images for download on their website:
➨ https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux-arm-images/
2https://github.com/offensive-security/kali-arm-build-scripts
Since these images are available, your task of installing Kali on an ARM device is greatly simplified. Here are the basic steps:
1. Download the image for your ARM device and ensure that the checksum matches the one provided on the website (see section 2.1.3, “Verifying Integrity and Authenticity” [page 16] for explanations on how to do that). Note that the images are usually xz-compressed; make sure to uncompress them with unxz.
2. Depending on the storage expansion slot available on your specific ARM device, acquire an SD card, micro SD card, or eMMC module that has a capacity of at least 8 GB.
3. Copy the downloaded image to the storage device with dd. This is similar to the process of copying an ISO image onto a USB key (see section 2.1.4, “Copying the Image on a DVD-ROM or USB Key” [page 19]).
# dd if=kali-image.img of=/dev/something bs=512k
# dd if=kali-image.img of=/dev/something bs=512k
4. Plug the SD-card/eMMC into your ARM device.
5. Boot your ARM device and log into it (user “root”, password “toor”). If you don’t have a screen connected, then you will have to figure out the IP address that has been assigned via DHCP and connect to that address over SSH. Some DHCP servers have tools or web interfaces to show the current leases. If you don’t have anything like that, use a sniffer to look for DHCP lease traffic.
6. Change the root password and generate new SSH host keys, especially if the device will be permanently running on a public network! The steps are relatively straightforward, see “Generating New SSH Host Keys ” [page 111].
7. Enjoy your new ARM device running Kali Linux!
Special Cases and More These instructions are generic and while they work for most devices, there are always
Detailed Documentation exceptions. For example, Chromebooks require developer mode and other devices require a special keypress in order to boot from external media.
Since ARM devices are added relatively frequently and their specifications are so dy- namic, we won’t cover specific installation instructions for various ARM devices here. Instead, refer to the dedicated ”Kali on ARM” section of the Kali documentation web- site for information about each ARM device supported by Offensive Security:
➨ http://docs.kali.org/category/kali-on-arm
Special Cases and More These instructions are generic and while they work for most devices, there are always
Detailed Documentation exceptions. For example, Chromebooks require developer mode and other devices require a special keypress in order to boot from external media.
Since ARM devices are added relatively frequently and their specifications are so dy- namic, we won’t cover specific installation instructions for various ARM devices here. Instead, refer to the dedicated ”Kali on ARM” section of the Kali documentation web- site for information about each ARM device supported by Offensive Security:
➨ http://docs.kali.org/category/kali-on-arm