Kali 2015-06-16

Initial setup of mars

Working on newton via PXE

Then cronus via USB

Mars

This was really straightforward, nothing fancy.

Newton

Installing Kali Linux on Newton because the optical drive is having a problem. Using the Kali install media (same one that worked on mars) results in a "non-bootable media" error.

F10 allows us to boot from the network, so we're going to set up mars as a PXE server, serve up a fresh Kali .iso image to Newton, and bing.

Setting Up PXE Server

Following these instructions.

Install dnsmasq

root@mars:~# apt-get install dnsmasq
Get:1 http://security.kali.org/ kali/updates/main dnsmasq-base i386 2.62-3+deb7u3 [364 kB]
Get:2 http://security.kali.org/ kali/updates/main dnsmasq all 2.62-3+deb7u3 [16.3 kB]
Fetched 381 kB in 1s (278 kB/s)
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 322018 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace dnsmasq-base 2.62-3+deb7u1 (using .../dnsmasq-base_2.62-3+deb7u3_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement dnsmasq-base ...
Selecting previously unselected package dnsmasq.
Unpacking dnsmasq (from .../dnsmasq_2.62-3+deb7u3_all.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up dnsmasq-base (2.62-3+deb7u3) ...
Setting up dnsmasq (2.62-3+deb7u3) ...
update-rc.d: We have no instructions for the dnsmasq init script.
update-rc.d: It looks like a network service, we disable it.
insserv: warning: current start runlevel(s) (empty) of script `dnsmasq' overrides LSB defaults (2 3 4 5).
insserv: warning: current stop runlevel(s) (0 1 2 3 4 5 6) of script `dnsmasq' overrides LSB defaults (0 1 6).

Change dnsmasq configuration

$ vim /etc/dnsmasq.conf

set the options:

interface=eth0
dhcp-range=192.168.101.100,192.168.101.200,12h
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/tftpboot/
dhcp-option=3,192.168.101.1
dhcp-option=6,8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

Restart dnsmasq

service dnsmasq restart

Make PXE Netboot Images

Make the images available via the PXE server with the following commands:

mkdir -p /tftpboot
cd /tftpboot
# for 32 bit systems:
wget http://repo.kali.org/kali/dists/kali/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz
tar zxpf netboot.tar.gz
rm netboot.tar.gz

Errors

Doing a basic install, the installer would download files from the Debian release repository. But after it got to 100%, it would give me a red screen and an error about a bad archive mirror.

This was really, really frustrating, not least because everyone who asked this question online got the same, unhelpful, irrelevant answers.

• http://serverfault.com/questions/240942/bad-archive-mirror-using-pxe-boot-method
• https://forums.kali.org/showthread.php?3313-Bad-archive-mirror-How-to-solve-this-one
• https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/45/t/1147
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1748181
• http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/bad-archive-mirror-on-debian-wheezy-install-4175510400/
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/392874/ubuntu-server-12-04-bad-archive-mirror
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/385627/why-did-i-a-get-a-bad-archive-mirror
• https://www.storagecraft.com/support/forum/install-error-bad-archive-mirror

And not a single answer that worked. All the threads are dead, or ended mid-conversation.

This one is a bit promising: https://forums.kali.org/archive/index.php/t-118.html