Problems installing on a Raspberry Pi Zero W

I downloaded kali-linux-2018.4-rpi0w-nexmon.img and flashed it to a 16GB MicroSD, and popped it into my Raspberry Pi Zero W (Actually, I tried two different ones, with the same problem). It starts to boot up, resizes the partition, then gets hung for hours at the same spot, something about WLAN0 failed to connect, and a power management message. it alternates those two messages every 20 minutes or so. I've tried booting up with a keyboard, but I'm unable to do anything. My power supply is good. I've tried booting it connected to a PC, and my Android phone, hoping it might show up as a network adapter, but no. I tried setting up a hotspot on my phone with the SSID of sepultura and password R4t4m4h4tt4, but that didn't work either. What am I doing wrong?

Hi RChadwick,

the Pi Zero image boots into the command line and the login prompt usually gets obfuscated straight away by those two messages.
Just hit enter on your keyboard and you should see the "kali login:" prompt again.

Hope that helps,
Re4son

You were right. Maybe it was my hub, or low battery in the wireless keyboard. Hitting enter got me the command prompt. Thanks!

Hi re4son

Is there any reason why the Pi zero W only boots to the command line? I haven't seen many reports for this so is this unusual behaviour? I tried typing "startx" but got "command not found" and, as I can't connect to WiFi (see later), I can't apt-get any updates or anything. I used the latest image from kali.org (kali-linux-2019.1-rpi0w-nexmon.img).

When logged in to command line I can't connect to WiFi - I tried iwconfig with SSID and password and also tried adding the WiFi router credentials to /etc/network/interfaces and adding to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and get no errors reported but don't get an IP assigned (I tried "dhclient wlan0" also). I do get some lines in the boot that may point to the problem but not sure if they are relevant or what do about them:

kali systemd-udevd[126]: Process '/sbin/crda' failed with exit code 249.

...then further down I get:

Dec 21 18:53:50 kali NetworkManager[250]: <info> [1545418430.8010] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: starting -> ready
Dec 21 18:53:50 kali NetworkManager[250]: <info> [1545418430.8043] device (wlan0): state change: unavailable -> disconnected (reason 'supplicant-available', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Dec 21 18:53:50 kali kernel: [ 20.182257] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
Dec 21 18:53:51 kali ModemManager[236]: <info> Couldn't check support for device '/sys/devices/platform/soc/20300000.mmc/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:0001/mmc1:0001:1': not supported by any plugin

The hardware seems OK as everything works in Raspbian including connecting to WiFi. I was also able to scan available WiFi networks from the Kali prompt using "iwlist wlan0 scan".

I'm fairly new to all this so any help would be greatly appreciated...

Hi Ouagadougou,

Most people seem to prefer a Pi Zero image without the gui but those who would like to have it can easily install it. Let's get your wifi working first though.
If you're new to this then you probably want to use "wpa_cli" to connect to your wifi network. You can run it interactively, which makes it easier to see the effect of each configuration step.
First make sure that the following stanza is in your "/etc/network/interfaces":

Code:

---

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

---

Then follow this guide
https://shapeshed.com/linux-wifi/
but instead of using the command in the guide to start the wpa_supplement:

Code:

---

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp3s0b1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/example.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant

---

Use this:
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Once that's out of the way to can head over to this site and install the "kalipi-config" tool. That makes configuring your wifi even more hassle free (or you could do that instead of the above if you have an ethernet adapter to connect to the Internet):

https://github.com/Re4son/RPi-Tweaks.../kalipi-config


Hope that helps and please let us know how you go,
Re4son

Thank you Re4son, that got me much further down the line. Getting the WiFi working is key to getting the rest and that worked perfectly after your help.

Getting the desktop working isn't so straightforward tough. I followed everything in kalipi-config and also added lightdm as suggested by kalipi-config. I then got an error that there was no .xsession file in my home directory and no session managers or window managers. So I found some help on that and created an .xsession file with the following entries:
#!/bin/sh

exec gkrellm &
exec gnome-session

...and I installed the two packages gkrellm and gnome-session. That got me into a desktop but I have no menu, icons or terminal available - I just seem to have a kali linux desktop with cpu/disk/wlan info in the top left but I can't do anything. Any idea what that is? I suspect I have used the wrong session manager or something but I don't know how to change it or what to change it to (or even if that's the real problem).

Many thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ouagadougou

Thank you Re4son, that got me much further down the line. Getting the WiFi working is key to getting the rest and that worked perfectly after your help.

Getting the desktop working isn't so straightforward tough. I followed everything in kalipi-config and also added lightdm as suggested by kalipi-config. I then got an error that there was no .xsession file in my home directory and no session managers or window managers. So I found some help on that and created an .xsession file with the following entries:
#!/bin/sh

exec gkrellm &
exec gnome-session

...and I installed the two packages gkrellm and gnome-session. That got me into a desktop but I have no menu, icons or terminal available - I just seem to have a kali linux desktop with cpu/disk/wlan info in the top left but I can't do anything. Any idea what that is? I suspect I have used the wrong session manager or something but I don't know how to change it or what to change it to (or even if that's the real problem).

Many thanks.

---

The easiest way to install a desktop is to use one of the meta packages that we have set up already. It will get you most of the way there typically. First off, I'm going to *highly* recommend *not* using gnome on a raspberrypi zero/zero w - there just isn't the RAM to handle the desktop and the performance will be utter garbage. I'd suggest something lightweight, like LXQt, LXDE, or XFCE. For lxde, or xfce, you can simply run

Code:

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apt install kali-desktop-lxde

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or

Code:

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apt install kali-desktop-xfce

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- for LXQt, we don't have our own meta package set up, but you can

Code:

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apt install lxqt

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- despite their small size, typically performance and power usage differences, using kali on the pizero is the same as it would be on an installation of kali.