Installing KALI LINUX on OrangePI ZERO 2W!!

Kali Linux is one of the most popular Operating System(OS) used for ethical hacking and cyber security purposes. In this Tutorial, we are going to install This operating system on our Little OrangePI ZERO 2W, shortly known as OPI Zero 2W.

Requirements

For Installing Kali Linux on OPI ZERO 2W, you may need the following things.

• A Linux Operating System (Arch Linux in this Case)
• A SDcard, Size >= 16GB (32 Gigabytes in this Case)
• A SDcard Reader
• An OrangePi ZERO 2W, Obviously :)

Step #1

First of all, we need to flash the kali linux operating system into the SDcard. For that, open this Github repository provided on official OrangePI website. 

The Above ScreenShot shows the different ISO files, for different versions of OrangePI, but for our device, we are going to download the last one which is a minimal version of Kali Linux for OPI ZERO 2W. Download it by clicking this. 

Step #2

After you download the ISO file, you will see a file named kali-linux-2024.2-opizero2w-minimal-arm64.img.xz, as you can see that this file is XZ compressed, So, we need to extract this file. Open a Terminal and Navigate to the directory, where you have downloaded this file. Usually, in linux operating system, it is ~/Downloads/. Head over to it, using cd command using cd ~/Downloads/ as shown in the below screenshot. 

After that type ls, and you will see your file. For extracting, it type xz --decompress kali-linux-2024.2-opizero2w-minimal-arm64.img.xz and you will see some similar ouputs to what you can see in the below screenshot.

Now we have our ISO file, Plug in your SDcard in your linux system and type lsblk and you will see a list of connected storage devices with your linux.

In my case, the first drive sda which is the storage device of my ARCH Linux. Where sdb is the name of my SDcard. Now, we have the name of our SDcard. Now we need to flash the image inside of our SDcard and for that we are going to use DD, which comes preinstalled with any linux operating system. Type the command sudo dd if=filename.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress. Replace X with the last digit of your storage device name. In my case, it is "b", also replace filename with the filename which in this case is "kali-linux-2024.2-opizero2w-minimal-arm64.img.xz".

Press Enter and your storage device will start getting flashed. Wait for 2 or 3 minutes till it complete.

On this step we are finished with our installation process, Now you can unplug the SDcard from your cardreader and directly put it inside of your OPI ZERO2W. After plugging the SDcard, you can get you display using mini HDMI port given on the device but if you don't want to dedicate a whole monitor to this device, you can do a few more steps and make this device able to connect to your wifi network everytime it bootup and also start SSH so that we can remotely connect to it.

Step #3

Don't Unplug your SDcardreader if you are here at this step. If you see at your desktop you will see your SDcard connected. Double click on it, to open it with your filemanager. Now when you are in, open up a new terminal inside of it. 

Type ls and you will see a list of different files. In your boot directory, create an empty text file named ssh to start ssh automatically on every boot with this command: "cd boot && sudo touch ssh".

After this type this command cd etc/wpa_supplicant && sudo nano wpa_supplicant.conf to open wpa_supplicant.conf file in /etc/wpa_supplicant directory with nano. Paste the following content inside of the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

country=YOUR_COUNTRY_CODE

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev

update_config=1

network={

    ssid="Your_WiFi_SSID"

    psk="Your_WiFi_Password"

    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

}

Change your country code with your country code, like PK for Pakistan, IN for india, US for America etc. Change Your_WIFI_SSID with your WIFI name and also change YOUR_WIFI_Password with your wifi password. 

On your keyboard press ctrl + x to exit and save the configuration file. Now type sudo chmod 600 wpa_supplicant.conf to give required permissions to the config file. After doing this type this cd .. && cd etc/network && sudo nano interfaces command to open the interfaces file found inside the etc/network directory with nano. Now in the interfaces file, paste the following content. 

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

    wpa-ssid "Your_WiFi_SSID"

    wpa-psk "Your_WiFi_Password"

Don't forget to change your wifi name and password. 

Press ctrl + x again to close and save the file. Okay Now we are all done. Unplug your SDCard from your computer, and plug it inside of your orange PI Zero 2W. Power up your device and wait for a few minutes to ensure that your device is connected to your wifi and has started ssh. After few minutes, type this command sudo nmap -sn 192.168.10.0/24 in your linux terminal to scan all the devices connected to your network. IP can be different in your case. We are doing this to find out the IP address of our device. You can also do this via your home router panel. 

When you get your IP address, you can run this command ssh kali@your_device_ip, in my case it was 192.168.10.6. Default password is kali and don't forget to do "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade" after you setup everything.

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