Any Linux experts in the South/East and Dublin area?

leinster rugby

Okay so I'm currently a student on work placement studying Computer Forensics & Security. I'm posting this because I'm genuinely worried going into 4th year as I've had horrendous networking issues with my laptop trying to run some Linux Operating Systems such as Ubuntu and Kali Linux (particularly Kali Linux). I was given VmWare workstation from college. Since day 1 with it I've had issues trying to solve the networking problems with little success. I've went to lecturer's, I've read what seems like 100's of tutorials for installing Linux, tried different versions of Linux but still had no success.

This year I ventured with Virtual Box which was a massive help for Ubuntu but was no use for Kali Linux and still plagues me with problems in particular trying to install packages to use such as SNORT, ARGUS etc.

So I've decided to try resolve this issue before going into my final year as my main idea for a final year project heavily involves the use of Kali Linux. I want to successfully use Kali Linux and be able to use a host of different tools and commands. I'm willing to meet up and pay for a session if it can solve my Linux issues. Anything to avoid this stress going into my final year would be worth it.

I'm currently using a Dell Inspirion 15 (3000 Series) with Intel CORE i5. I'm not sure if this is a 100% true but I've heard Macs have far less Linux problems if this is true I would definitely consider buying a new laptop if it'll mean it will resolve these issues. However, 90% of my classmates don't have Macs and they seem to have 0 issues with Linux, which is why I have not bought a new laptop yet.

Kind regards,
Leinster Rugby

phildin

I suspect the real area of expertise that you will need will be in whatever virtualisation you're using (whether it's virtualbox, vmware etc.) since this bridges the communication between your virtualised operating system and the real network hardware. Personally, I would break this problem up into two phases:

1. I would get Kali Linux running natively on your laptop. I would then beg/borrow/steal another machine on which to run whatever your target operating needs to be (let's assume Linux also). Get a wired switch so you're not messing about with wifi drivers and then get your basic proof of concept working.

2. If you then decide that for logistical reasons that you'd rather work with virtualised machines, give that a go. Tools that worked fine in scenario 1 may not work fine in this scenario so you'll have a reliable baseline to compare to.

I wouldn't get overly hung up on Kali Linux by the way. It looks like it bundles up a bunch of useful tools but all of those tools should work perfectly fine on other Linux distros. If it's easier for you to get Ubuntu installed natively on your laptop then do so and add the tools afterwards.

I wouldn't go down the route of getting a Mac for this. The tools you're likely to want to use are generally going to be Linux first. They may or may bot have Windows and/or Mac versions which may or may not behave in the same way but you're likely to be fighting the platform for the whole time (no criticism of Macs generally, it's just that they're usually not the target market for security tools in much the same way that Linux is generally not the target market for audio/video production tools).

Phil

ressem

Kali seems to recommend using their pre-made Vmware images to reduce driver issues? http://docs.kali.org/general-use/install-vmware-tools-kali-guest
failing that...
Keeping in mind that I haven't any information on your course, just expressing a notion on creating a working lab machine, 'tis your money.

I'd be more inclined to get a refurbished second hand little desktop for a hundred quid or less, or old corporate type laptop (hp probook, dell latitude, lenovo thinkpad); which are more likely to have stable linux network driver support; add a second cabled network card. Wifi drivers on linux has long been a sore issue if unlucky with networking chipsets, using non-open drivers.

The desktop with two physical Lan cards would make man-in-the-middle capture, routing, firewalling, vpn more straightforward.

edit:
or Kali on a Raspberry Pi 2 for a little portable cigarette box demo device?

Alcoheda

This is a great resource.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_configuration.

If you need real time help you should try [url]irc://irc.freenode.org/##linux[/url] and [url]irc://irc.freenode.org/##networking[/url]

niallb

Don't Dell actually ship that machine with Ubuntu pre-installed in the US?
You may have a variant. What graphics card do you have on it?
If you have wireless problems, consider replacing the wireless card with a model
that comes recommended for whatever Kali'ness you want to throw at it!

I found an article which reads like a similar experience on the Linux Mint Forums
For example it addresses constant wifi dropouts with

echo "blacklist i2c_hid" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and a reboot.

It also reports that upgrading the kernel to 4.4.0-31 or newer fixes the Wifi issue with the Realtek RTL8723BE if that's the chipset you have.

Depending on your graphics card, you may get some mileage from swapping between UEFI and Legacy boot modes to get the card initialised at boot.

Post up the output of the lspci command on the thread here,
and see can we get you sorted!

PrzemoF

@leinster_rugby: what are the issues you have? I'm sure we can help you when we know what is the problem.

Hotblack Desiato

Dells should be good on Linux, in some markets they offer Linux on the same machines they sell with Windows only here.

I bought an Inspiron 5000 15" a couple of months ago, blew away windoze10 without activating it and installed openSUSE, just booted the USB install image and off it went, the only thing which didn't work perfectly out of the box was the screen brightness keys which was easily sorted.* I didn't even bother disabling secure boot.

Before that I had openSUSE dual booting on a Macbook, and that wasn't easy to set up at all, they're very locked down systems on the firmware level and Boot Camp wasn't an option unless I wanted to get a (paid) OS X upgrade. The only thing I used to boot into OS X for was to load stuff onto my (Mac formatted) iPod, but all my music has been on my phone for years now so after a while I didn't even bother with that. So I used Linux pretty much exclusively on it. I did get nine and a half years out of the Macbook so I can't complain even though it was twice the price, in 2007, of my current Dell in 2017.

Very rare for wireless or networking to be driver problems on Linux these days. The main thing people have to watch out for is Optimus (and whatever the AMD equivalent is) graphics setups with a GPU as well as integrated graphics, but even for these the main distros are getting better at handling them without manual fiddling. My Inspiron has only Intel graphics and Intel wireless so they just work without any proprietary driver messing around.

I'd agree with the others here that your problems are to do with the hypervisor not Linux as such.

Make notes of every option you choose during the installation (if you change any defaults) and anything you change afterwards, so if you mess it up and need to reinstall you can get back to where you were.

I'd also strongly advise, once you have everything working right, to blow it all away and start again with full disk encryption using LVM because laptops are so easily lost or stolen


* the current openSUSE, 42.2, uses a 4.4 kernel which was out before Kaby Lake chipsets, my Inspiron has a Kaby Lake Core i5 so I thought I'd try a later kernel, Tumbleweed the rolling release version of openSUSE has a 4.10 kernel so I just grabbed that kernel package from the TW repository, installed that package in the 42.2 install, and hey presto.

Even if you want to stick with a stable distro for your usual work, it's worth having a couple of spare partititions so you can install a rolling release version of your distro to try out stuff, or an entirely different flavour of Linux to give that a go. I had TW on another partition and all the function keys worked perfectly there, so that was a pretty big clue the later kernel was needed.

5rtytry56

Right now I am happily running Linux Mint Serena 18.1 Cinnemon 64 bit on my i5 Asus 550ca, a basic Intel GPU and 4GB ram - to be upgraded though to 8GB. Mint was installed by DVD iso which was downloaded from the Mint website.

duffman85

@leinster rugby - where are you having the network problems?
- running linux on your laptop
- running linux in a VM running on your laptop

if it's the latter, then as ressem suggested just download the pre-made images from https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux-vmware-virtualbox-image-download/ and import into virtualbox. VMware has similar functionality. These should have the networking in the VM preconfigured.

niallb

Hello?

Ziycon

Have a look at running Kali from a USB in a persistent state, saves you having to install anything on your laptop, you just boot up from the USB and your all ready to go, all the information is on the Kali website on how to do it.