Kali Linux USB With Persistence On Mac

pentestmac.wordpress.com /2015/11/28/kali-linux-usb-persistence-mac/
~ KaliLinux
Getting Kali Linux, or any other Linux distribution, up and running on your Mac can sometimes be problematic.
Although things have gotten easier with some new tools. As a Macbook Pro user (mid 2014 model) I wanted to be
able to use Kali Linux on my Macbook in a USB liveboot mode, with persistence. One primary reason for wanting to
maintain persistence is that there is quite a bit of setup involved to get all the drivers working, and I didnt want to
have to go through all of that each time I booted into Linux.
I tried many methods of getting things working, even following the instructions on the Kali Linux website didnt work
exactly. I ended up with a strange occurrence when rebooting that I had to select the windows partition for boot
rather than the mac EFI. Below are my instructions on how I set up this live USB with persistence, its produced
reliable results and hopefully it will do for you to. The process was done using my Macbook Pro mid 2014 model,
running OSX El Capitan.
Theres a few things you will need in order to get started.
1. A USB stick with minimum of 8GB storage (Im using a 16GB scan disk USB3.0 thumb drive)
2. Download the free software Mac Linux USB Loader from here https://sevenbits.github.io/Mac-Linux-USBLoader/
3. Download the latest build of Kali Linux (I use the amd64 version) and keep the .iso file in your downloads
folder
STEP 1
First we need to prepare the USB stick. We will use the MAC OSX native disk utility tool for this. Open the
Disk utility tool, and select the correct USB device (in my case SanDisk Cruzer..)
Click on Erase and choose the following options
Name Kali Linux
Format MS-DOS (FAT)
Scheme Master Boot Record
Press the Erase button. The Disk Utility will then run
through its formatting process. When finished click on
Done. You should now have a single clean partition on
your USB drive as shown below.
Now the USB disk has been prepared we can move onto
the next step, which will be to setup the drive using the
Mac Linux USB Loader.
STEP 2
Open up the Mac Linux USB Loader software and select Create Live USB. This will bring up a finder
window, where you can navigate to your downloaded Kali Linux.iso disk image. Select the Kali Linux disk
image that you downloaded earlier.

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On the next screen you will see your USB thumb drive listed with he name kali Linux (if you named it that
when formatting). Select this USB drive and click
Next
On this screen click on Begin Installation.
Once this has completed, you should now find a
directory structure on the USB disk like this
:-/efi/boot inside the boot folder there will be a couple
of .efi files and a boot.iso disk image.
STEP 3
Theres one final step we need to take in order to ensure
that Kali Linux boots in persistence mode every time. We
need to edit the enterprise configuration file. Open up the
Mac Linux USB Loader again, and select the option
Setup USB Device.
In the new window, select the Kali Linux USB drive from
the left side. This is a list of the various available bootable
USB drives. Once the correct drive is selected click on
Edit Enterprise Configuration File. This will open a
text edit window with the configuration file. You need to
change the hostname from kali to kali persistence.
Save this file, and close.
Your USB bootable disk is now ready. Reboot your
Macbook Pro while holding down the alt / option key.
You will be presented with a boot option list, select the
EFID boot option. This will present another menu where
you can select the boot mode, and the available Linux
Distributions. Kali Linux should then boot up and now you
have a Linux Live session running on your machine.
Theres now just one more thing we need to do in order
to setup persistence and make it work correctly.
STEP 4
We will use Linux tools to resize the partition. You can
use the GUI tool GParted or it can be done through the
terminal. Heres the terminal commands :end=7gb
read start _ < <(du -bcm kali-linux-1.0.8.amd64.iso | tail -1); echo $start
parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary $start $end
after the parted process has finished there will be a new partition created at /dev/sdb3. You can verify this
with the disk -l command to list all available drives.
Next we wil create a ext3 filesystem in the new partition. the filesystem will be labeled persistence. The
terminal commands are as follows :-

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mkfs.ext3 -L persistence /dev/sdb3

e2label /dev/sdb3 persistence
Next we will create a mount point for the new partition
and then create the persistence configuration file, finally
we will then unmount the partition. Heres the terminal
commands :mkdir -p /mnt/my_usb
mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/my_usb
echo / union > /mnt/my_usb/persistence.conf
umount /dev/sdb3
We are pretty much done! All that remains now is to
reboot (using the option key again to boot into Linux).
Once into Kali Linux create a new folder on the desktop,
or a file in the documents folder. Reboot again, and
check that its still there. If so then congratulations youve
done everything right and you now have a live bootable
USB drive running Kali Linux in persistence mode on
your Macbook Pro.
Now all that remains is to get the Wireless adapter working.
This is by far the most difficult part of the whole process, the
broadcom drivers for Linux arent well supported, and
depending on the model year of your Macbook Pro will
depend on what chipset version and driver you need.
References :https://studyblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/guide-mac-os-xlion-how-to-boot-a-linux-live-system-from-a-usb-drive-how-toupdate-any-ocz-ssds-firmware/
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-boot-a-linux-live-usbstick-on-your-mac/
http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-install
http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usbpersistence

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