Install Kali for locally testing scenarios

This is how I install Kali Linux 2016.2 x64 locally within VMware Fusion 8.5.x for testing various scenarios.

Go to https://www.kali.org/ and download the ISO: http://cdimage.kali.org/kali-2016.2/kali-linux-2016.2-amd64.iso

Using the torrent file is usually results in a much quicker download speed.

I start up VMware Fusion…

Drag and drop the ISO…

Select Linux -> Other Linux 3.x kernel 64-bit

On the last screen…

I normally click the customize settings button, select the folder i want to save the VM into and then …

I normally share a folder for easy of use, increase the processors to 4 cores, the RAM to 4096 MB (4 GB), and the hard disk to 200 GB …

For my local testing, I often leave the network adapter set to share with my mac while I am setting up and updating the VM. When I get down to testing specific scenario, I often change the network adapter to private for my mac so the VMs can only talk to each other, hence testing and packet captures are less likely to be contaminated with eternal factors.

I start the vm and when it gets to the menu I generally select the graphical install…

English …

I select United States and then American English within the menu.

I leave the hostname as kali…

and the domain name blank …

I set the root password to toor …

Select my time zone, and use the default partitioning options …

default for the disks …

default for the partitions …

defaults for all …

yes to writting the changes to disk …

use network mirror …

no proxy …

boot loader …

select /dev/sda

and we are almost done …

and once everything is working i normal take a snapshot using VMware fusion so I can reset back to this state if anything goes wrong …

and then I log into kali with the username of root and password of toor …

:)

NOTE: on ESXi if you increase the amount of video RAM from 4MB to 32MB it no longer has a black screen anymore and i can now change the screen resolution…