Kali/Dual Boot OS X

Following this guide: http://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-dual-boot-on-mac-hardware

I'm running on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro (Model 7,1).

First things first: download the image, and make a bootable USB.

Bootable USB Drive

Following instructions here:

http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-install

After downloading the iso, check to make sure it's legit:

$ cat kali-linux-1.1.0a-amd64.txt.sha1sum && openssl sha1 kali-linux-1.1.0a-amd64.iso
2b8d2db20e2709c5e9e0f9f9bbd8606c9b9e729f  kali-linux-1.1.0a-amd64.iso
SHA1(kali-linux-1.1.0a-amd64.iso)= 2b8d2db20e2709c5e9e0f9f9bbd8606c9b9e729f

I ran this command once without the USB drive plugged in, and once with the USB plugged in:

$ diskutil list

I found my disk at /dev/disk2. I unmounted it with

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

Then I formatted the USB drive with:

$ sudo dd if=kali-linux-1.1.0a-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m

Give it a good 20 minutes or so...

2921+1 records in
2921+1 records out
3063349248 bytes transferred in 762.810003 secs (4015875 bytes/sec)

And that's all folks, now the USB drive is bootable.

Installing rEFInd

Back to this guide: http://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-dual-boot-on-mac-hardware

To install rEFInd, the boot loader for OS X, I ran:

$ curl -s -L http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.3/refind-bin-0.8.3.zip -o refind.zip
$ unzip refind.zip
$ cd refind-bin* 

and finally,

$ sudo bash install.sh
Installing rEFInd on OS X....
Installing rEFInd to the partition mounted at //
Copied rEFInd binary files

Copying sample configuration file as refind.conf; edit this file to configure
rEFInd.


WARNING: If you have an Advanced Format disk, *DO NOT* attempt to check the
bless status with 'bless --info', since this is known to cause disk corruption
on some systems!!


Installation has completed successfully.

Booting Into Kali

Now that we have installed rEFInd, we can insert our USB key and hold down the option key when rebooting to get the first boot menu:

|When we do that we get the Mac menu. We can select the EFI drive, which is our Mac hard drive. Now we will see the rEFInd menu:

If we pick the boot from legacy OS FAT 32 option, it will boot Kali Linux from the USB drive:

This will allow us to boot into Kali Linux Live mode and install Kali Linux from there. When we pick the black and white windows flag it will boot into Kali live mode.

Install Kali

To install Kali, pick the installation option from the Kali boot menu.

Now you'll go through the installation process with Kali Linux, and it will be pretty straightforward:

You'll have to partition your disk space:

And keep rolling on through the installation process:

If You Run Into Errors

I ran into the error below while installing Kali. I had to restart the installation process, but the second time around it went okay. So if you run into an error like this, just give it another go!

Fixing Grub

Once I finished with the installation, I restarted the computer, and held down the option key. I picked boot into legacy OS on FAT system again, and booted into the Kali Linux live mode again. From there, I needed to convert the master boot record to a hybrid boot record, to make it possible to boot from grub on the Kali Linux partition. (If we skip this step, the Kali partition is not bootable.)

After logging into the Live mode Kali LInux, run the following commands as root:

root@kali:~# gdisk /dev/sda

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 1B3DB3D4-ECFD-47A1-9435-F2FF318C2F55
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 245 sectors (122.5 KiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition
2 409640 548413439 261.3 GiB AF00 Macintosh
3 975503592 976773127 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD
4 548413440 548415487 1024.0 KiB EF02
5 548415488 958138367 195.4 GiB 0700
6 958138368 975503359 8.3 GiB 8200

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 5
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #5 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 83
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N): n

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sda.
The operation has completed successfully.
root@kali:~#