Kali on FreeNAS?

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CaptainCrazy

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Hi there!

I was thinking about installing Kali Linux in a jail on my FreeNAS build, but when I tried it some time ago I couldn't get it to run. I'm looking to upgrade the machine and I was wondering whether someone here got Kali Linux working properly in a FreeNAS jail. If so, I'll get 16GB of RAM and hope it runs smooth enough on the Pentium CPU so I can use it remotely on any laptop/pc. If not, I'll just add 4GB so I get a total of 8GB. So yes, I'm running FreeNAS with only 4GB and seeing that a lot of people claim that can cause weird problems, I'd like to find out whether the RAM issue could prohibit me from running Kali Linux in a jail or whether it just doesn't work at all.

Does anyone here know for sure whether Kali Linux (2016.2 at the moment) can run in a FreeNAS jail or not? Or is there perhaps someone who is willing to try it for me? You very well could make me very happy or save me the price difference of 4GB vs. 16GB :P As soon as I'm running at either 8GB or 16GB total I'll try again and report back of course.

Thanks in advance!
 

pirateghost

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Well, for starters, a jail can only run freebsd (I know there was an attempt at a hacked together Linux jail a while back), so your only option to install Kali would be in a virtual box jail. It would install just like any other OS.

Another option that may or may not work is iohyve, which is command line only until 10 comes out. YMMV.

Personally, with virtual box going away in 10 and considering what a hack it is currently, I would avoid it altogether.

But more importantly, get more RAM in your system. If, for nothing other than stability.

Let me ask you this though, Why Kali? Do you understand it's real purpose? Do you understand it isn't INTENDED to be installed permanently?
 

CaptainCrazy

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Thanks for your reply!

If you think it should install without any problems I think the mere 4GB of RAM gave me problems. I will upgrade it within a couple of days.

You gave me a scare when I read that VirtualBox is going away in 10..! Luckily I read this in a blog post:
"The third thing you need to know about FreeNAS 10 is that it includes the bhyve hypervisor and can host and manage Virtual Machines and Docker containers. We have leveraged these capabilities in some interesting ways within FreeNAS itself and plan to leverage it more in the future (more on this later in the post)."

Perhaps I'll wait until 10 is out then. As long as I can run at least 1 VM at a time I'm happy. I only want a storage server and some Pi's online 24/7. At the moment I wake my pc when I need something else, but I almost always forget to shut it down again after I'm done... :) That's why I loved the sound of VMs running on a NAS!

And yes, I know why I want Kali. I could use Debian or something, but Kali is such a beautiful package I'd rather never go through the hassle of installing every single bit I want/need. Indeed it shouldn't be installed permanently. It would be a dream if I could enter a couple of commands on my mobile phone, grab a random pc, log in through my VPN-Pi and 'suddenly' have a clean Kali install with lots of storage and more CPU power and RAM than a Pi can offer. For serious projects I work in a different way and when I just want a quick setup on a random pc or laptop, I use a live version from a USB stick. But I don't like to bring a laptop everywhere I go and a live version is very slow, so a VM on a server at home sounds great to me.
 

pirateghost

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A live version running on USB 2 or 3 is not slow. Kali is INTENDED to run from USB....
 

Sakuru

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