Introduction to Kali Linux.

Kali Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution. Kali Linux is to be used by those who are professional penetration testers, cybersecurity experts, ethical hackers, or those who know how to operate it. When it comes to penetration testing, hacking and offensive Linux distributions, one of the first thing to be mentioned is Kali Linux.

These are steps to configure Kali Linux for Penetration Testing or Bug Bounty.

It ranges from changing/editing the repository for the installation of NVIDIA graphic drivers in Optimus laptops to setting up PYTHON(latest/2.7) and PIP(latest/2.7).

Set the password for root

sudo passwd

Switch to root:

sudo su

APT transport for downloading via the HTTP Secure protocol (HTTPS)

apt install apt-transport-https

Google search: Kali repo mirror and copy the mirror repo of any region in:

vim /etc/apt/sources.list 

THE default REPO

 deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

Fast REPO

 deb https://kali.download/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

Replace the current/default repo's url with the mirror repo's url. (It will help speed up the downloading processes) But if it doesn't work and the downloading speed is slow, undo the changes in the file.

apt update
	
apt upgrade 

apt install kali-linux-large
		
apt dist-upgrade

apt full-upgrade

Restart Required by using the command:

 [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && reboot -f

Install kernel headers.

apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Restart by using the command:

[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && reboot -f

note: The above commands will install Kali Linux on PC/Laptop with integrated graphics, you can skip the NVIDIA part and directly go to python installation

Installing NVIDIA DRIVERS.

Install NVIDIA drivers in Optimus laptop:

uname -a

Verify you have hybrid graphics.

lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D"

Disable nouveau

echo -e "blacklist nouveau\noptions nouveau modeset=0\nalias nouveau off" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

Generate an initramfs image

update-initramfs -u && reboot

System will reboot and nouveau should be disabled. Verify if nouveau is disabled:

lsmod | grep -i nouveau

If it shows nothing, it means nouveau is disabled.

When the nouveau is disabled Install NVIDIA driver from Kali Linux's repo:

apt install nvidia-xconfig nvidia-driver

If the command shows error just give the following command(Optional Command)

apt install nvidia-xconfig

After the successful installation of NVIDIA driver, install 'Cuda' from the official NVIDIA website

(Cuda will start encoding in Kali Linux and it will help run a few programs better).

If the drivers are not working properly or if it doesn't support dual monitor, you'll have to follow the following steps:

We have to find BusID of our NVIDIA card:

nvidia-xconfig --query-gpu-info | grep 'BusID :' | cut -d ' ' -f6

It will show the BusID like " PCI:1:0:0 "

Open the file in Terminal

vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• Copy This Code

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Screen 0 "nvidia"
    Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Device "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

Now we have to create some scripts according to our display manager

vim /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart/optimus.desktop

• Copy This Code

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Optimus
Exec=sh -c "xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0; xrandr --auto"
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=DisplayServer

Copy this file to designated location

cp -v /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart/optimus.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/optimus.desktop

Restart by using the command:

[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && reboot -f 

For checking if the NVIDIA driver is working or not

hashcat -I 

Encoding enabled or not:

apt install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -encoders 2>/dev/null | grep nvenc

Benchmark testing:

hashcat -b

PYTHON

After the basic setup of Kali Linux you should check for the versions of python and pip installed in Kali. If the version is mis-matched, they will conflict and won't work properly.

To check the latest version of python use the command:

python -V

Also check for the latest version of pip using the command:

pip -V 

We will install the 2.7 version of both Python and Pip:

Check for those versions if they are installed or not ny using the following commands:

For Python

python2.7 -V

For pip 2.7

pip2.7 -V 

Download pip2.7 version.

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/2.7/get-pip.py

Install your pip2.7 version package.

python2.7 get-pip.py

For pip

pip -V 

Check And Download the latest pip version package https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/

Install your latest version package.

python get-pip.py

You can install Sublime editor from the official Sublime website.

Caution ⚠ (If You install CUDA Toolkit So Comment it's Repositories)

wget -qO - https://download.sublimetext.com/sublimehq-pub.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sublimehq-archive.gpg > /dev/null

echo "deb https://download.sublimetext.com/ apt/stable/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list

apt update 

apt install sublime-text

After the successful installation of the above you can just install the basic tools that we need by the single command:

apt install build-essential cmake ninja-build libgtkmm-3.0-dev libgtksourceviewmm-3.0-dev libxml++2.6-dev libsqlite3-dev gettext libgspell-1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libuchardet-dev libfribidi-dev libvte-2.91-dev libfmt-dev libspdlog-dev rclone vim fonts-lato fonts-open-sans fonts-roboto fonts-mononoki fonts-indic grc python3 python-is-python3 gcc-multilib g++-multilib libtesseract-dev jq python3-pip openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome  testssl.sh dirsearch wkhtmltopdf virtualbox virtualbox-ext-pack virtualbox-guest-additions-iso golang remmina remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-secret youtube-dl flameshot ruby whois git curl libpcap-dev wget zip python3-dev pv dnsutils libssl-dev libffi-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev zlib1g-dev nmap apt-transport-https lynx tor medusa xvfb libxml2-utils procps bsdmainutils libdata-hexdump-perl wget curl tmux git nmap masscan unzip chromium rsync coreutils net-tools htop prips xmlstarlet gnome-power-manager jython mesa-utils wmctrl  xserver-xorg-input-synaptics libgl1-mesa-dev xorg-dev

Caution⚠

• In case of the mis-configuration or any error, if you want to remove the NVIDIA drivers just follow the commands mentioned below and the drivers will be removed:

apt-get remove --purge nvidia*

rm -rf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
        
dpkg --configure -a
        
apt autoremove 

After the successful installation of NVIDIA drivers and everything,

DON't run the following commands as it can result in the deletion if the drivers.

apt autoremove
 	
apt autoclean

After the setup is complete, don't update or upgrade the version of Kali Linux until it is extremely necessary

because if you do there might be chances of mis-configuration or versions mis-matching and Kali will not work properly after that.*

After all this, the Basic SetUp for Kali Linux is complete and you're good to go!!

restart you laptop

throughout the code wherever you see text in this fomat it contains important URL links for respective tools or commands OPEN the links with 'ctl key pressed while you click' so that it will open in new tab.