Murdoch's Blog

Setting Up Kali Linux VM/Container with GUI on M-Series Macs

2024-08-30 ctfs

Requirements

M-Series Mac (Apple Silicon)
At least 12GB of free space (more depending on desired packages)
OrbStack installed
NoMachine installed

Introduction

This guide outlines the process for setting up a Kali Linux virtual machine or container on an M-series Mac. It uses OrbStack, a fast and lightweight alternative to Docker Desktop and virtualization solutions like Parallels. NoMachine is used to get GUI access to Kali.

Option 1: Installing a Kali Linux VM with OrbStack

Create and Setup the VM

Create a new Kali Linux VM from OrbStack
Get a shell on the VM
Set a password for the user.
```
sudo passwd user
```
Update apt packages, install the default system metapackage, and choose a desktop environment.
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y kali-linux-default kali-desktop-i3
```
Note: You can replace kali-desktop-i3 with the default kali-desktop-xfce or another desktop environment/window manager of your choice.

Download and install the NoMachine ARM64 package.

wget https://download.nomachine.com/download/8.13/Arm/nomachine_8.13.1_1_arm64.deb
dpkg -i ./nomachine_8.13.1_1_arm64.deb

Confirm that nxserver is running.
```
service nxserver status
```

Connect to the VM

Find the IP address of the Kali VM:
Using the NoMachine Mac client, create a new connection to the VM and connect.
After going through the connection setup, you will have GUI access to the new Kali VM:
Troubleshooting
On reboot, eth0 sometimes starts in the DOWN state. I have been able to fix this by restarting the networking service via a terminal to the VM:
```
sudo service networking restart
```

Option 2: Installing a Kali Linux Container with OrbStack

The same process, with some small changes, can be repeated for creating a Kali Linux container.

Create the container:
```
sudo docker run -d -it --cap-add=SYS_PTRACE kalilinux/kali-rolling
```
Note: The --cap-add=SYS_PTRACE is required to bypass display startup errors with NoMachine. This solution was found here.
Setup the container, performing the same steps as for the VM. We update repositories; install the system metapackage, desktop environment metapackage, and NoMachine; and then finally create the user.
```
apt update && apt install -y kali-linux-default kali-desktop-i3
wget https://download.nomachine.com/download/8.13/Arm/nomachine_8.13.1_1_arm64.deb
dpkg -i ./nomachine_8.13.1_1_arm64.deb
adduser user
usermod -aG sudo user
```
Now the container should be ready. Get its IP address ip a and use the Mac NoMachine client to connect to the container, as we did for the VM.

Post-Install

This provides a base Kali Linux install with some common tools. To get the rest of the tools you may be used to from the full install (e.g. burpsuite), you can either install them individually or through Kali's tools and menu metapackages.