Howto: Build a Kali MATE Image (The right way)

So what's wrong with the standard MATE build? Well, one thing is that a display manager is not installed (resulting in a text mode login, then you have to run startx manually). Also airmon-ng doesn't work out of the box because of missing packages. And lastly, there is no network manager. These are easy to fix.

# Setup
apt-get install -y live-build debootstrap
git clone git://git.kali.org/live-build-config.git
cd live-build-config/

# Add missing packages
echo "" >> kali-config/variant-mate/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
echo usbutils >> kali-config/variant-mate/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
echo ieee-data >> kali-config/variant-mate/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
echo wavemon >> kali-config/variant-mate/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
echo network-manager-gnome >> kali-config/variant-mate/package-lists/kali.list.chroot

# Fix autologin and startx
unzip ~/Attachment 1002 -d kali-config/common/includes.chroot

# Make ISO
./build.sh --distribution sana --variant mate --verbose --arch i386

The Kali docs say go get a cup of coffee while the image builds. I say go do something that lasts over 3.5 hours, because that's how long it takes on my P4! Also, about 3GB of packages will be downloaded. So if you make one little change and rebuild, the cache is cleared and there goes another 3GB. You can eliminate the repeated downloads by removing the --purge option in the build.sh script.

Invalid Attachment specified please fix it.

You were not able to download the zip file? Make sure you are logged in and try again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scorpius

You were not able to download the zip file? Make sure you are logged in and try again.

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I'm logged in.

Answer: "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

I don't know what's wrong with the attachment, but you can recreate the tiny 642-byte zip file by pasting this one-liner.

Code:

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echo 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 | xxd -ps -r - autologin-startx.zip

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by scorpius

I don't know what's wrong with the attachment, but you can recreate the tiny 642-byte zip file by pasting this one-liner.

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THX

#Magnethelm

Roughly how much disk space is used at the peak of the process? It's been a while since I did a respin (1.0.9 IIRC) and it used a lot more than the size of the output .iso

I've previously done my respins from within a kali VM in virtualbox and I like to allocate enough space but not too much.

It downloads about 3GB of packages, plus it needs space to create a temporary iso, so I'd say your need at least 10GB.