Kali Linux on Raspberry Pi B+ TFT Screen

[CodeMonkey]

I have a quick compatibility question. I want to get a B+ and put Kali on it. I want a < 5" screen on it, but all screens in that range are TFT.

I want just display and support for a wireless mini keyboard/touchpad combo. I'm not concerned with trying to use the clunky touch features.

a) Would a TFT screen work as a display if I just use the standard RPi Kali image? or would I need the TFT image to make it display anything?

b) If I need to use the TFT image, would that still support the mini keyboard/touchpad?


Thanks for any help. I'm fairly new to the Kali world and am really trying to get my head around a lot of things still.

[steev]

The RPi B+ TFT image is only tested and guaranteed to work with the PiTFT shield from Adafruit. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say mini keyboard/touchpad. That's just a standard USB HID device, and should be supported just fine.

If you just want to plug in a small TFT to the hdmi port, then the standard image would work just fine. And actually it would be preferred. The RPi with PiTFT support is ONLY meant for an RPi with PiTFT connected, although the script is publicly available if people wanted/needed to modify it to create an image for their own devices that they are using. Unfortunately, we can't support every device and configuration under the sun, but that's the beauty of everything being open sourced, you can put in the work and test it all yourself

[slow_one]

duplicate post

[slow_one]

Can you point me at the RPi B+ TFT image?
I'm trying to follow this guide, granted it's a bit old. I'm able to install Kali just fine, but when I get to the part where I install the adafruit software, I get an error ("package architecture (armhf) does not match system (armel) "). This is step 6 of the third section, "Step Three: Plug Everything In and Power On".

I've tried using this one, here: https://images.offensive-security.co...-rpitft.img.xz

Any suggestions?
I'm new to the RPi and Linux and am wanting to learn.
I'm on a Raspberry B+

[steev]

Kali is based on debian; Debian's support for raspberry pi (armv6) is armel NOT armhf. If you want to follow that guide, you will need to use Raspbian.

[slow_one]

Kali is based on debian; Debian's support for raspberry pi (armv6) is armel NOT armhf. If you want to follow that guide, you will need to use Raspbian.

That makes sense... but what about the pre-installed packages that Kali uses?
Is there a single package I can install that's compatible with Raspbian?

[steev]

No... you choose one or the other, not both; armel and armhf are incompatible. The packages that adafruit uses are simply some scripts to make editing a few files easier; and their own kernel fork. We (Kali) have everything in place, if the default settings don't work for you, you just need to edit the correct files.

Typically the file is in /etc/modprobe.d/ - if the pitft.conf that is in there doesn't work, simply modify it to use the correct options for your tft device, or copy it somewhere (so you can keep the original)

[slow_one]

The packages that I was referring to are the ones for penetration testing... not the ones for getting the TFT to work.

One a side note, for the file you're talking about, in /etc/modprobe.d/ , which settings need to be edited?

[crackers66]

it can't be that hard, and yet I've had every error listed on this forum... adafruit 3.5 txt and kali 2.0 - could someone post a link to an image ready to go instead of links to the images we've all started at and for one reason or another have stumbled... there is not a single ready-built image out there that's good to go and we are talking fairly standard h/w here.

[re4son]

it can't be that hard, and yet I've had every error listed on this forum... adafruit 3.5 txt and kali 2.0 - could someone post a link to an image ready to go instead of links to the images we've all started at and for one reason or another have stumbled... there is not a single ready-built image out there that's good to go and we are talking fairly standard h/w here.

I've got an image of Sticky Finger's Kali Pi on my ftp server. It's running Kali Linux 2016.1 with a PiTFT 3.5" as documented here:

http://whitedome.com.au/re4son/index...ngers-kali-pi/

It's a 2GB download. Just send me a mail under re4son [at] whitedome.com.au and I'll send you a user name and password to download the image. I haven't figured out how to enable anonymous ftp yet ;-)

Hope that helps,
Re4son

[steev]

The packages that I was referring to are the ones for penetration testing... not the ones for getting the TFT to work.

One a side note, for the file you're talking about, in /etc/modprobe.d/ , which settings need to be edited?

Right; and I'm saying, adafruit's packages are built for raspbian which is incompatible with Debian/Kali; Raspbian is a fork that is rebuilt for hardfloat. If you want to use the adafruit packages (hint: their kernel isn't patched for wifi injection) then you need to use Raspbian and then rebuild all of the kali packages that you would normally use on top of Raspbian.

Alternatively,

the file is /etc/modprobe.d/pitft.conf

If you look inside, the contents are:

options fbtft_device name=adafruitrt28 rotate=90 frequency=3200000

Based on my read through of the script from the walkthrough you were following, you would want to change the name= line to whatever your LCD is that you are using.

I wouldn't just blindly run their script since Kali isn't set up the same way as debian. You will need to walk through the script and see what it wants to do, and then do it manually; or edit the script to make it work with Kali.

Editing the script would likely be the better option since it appears they also add some other configurations (and some of the boards require a different frequency= as well!)

So, for example, if you have the 35r, it might look something along the lines of

options fbtft_device name=adafruitrt35r rotate=90 frequency=42000000

Alternatively, if you would like to try using the dt overlays:

edit or create /boot/config.txt and make it look something like:

[pi1]
device_tree=bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb
[pi2]
device_tree=bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb
[all]
dtparam=spi=on
dtparam=i2c1=no
dtparam=i2c_arm=on
dtoverlay=pitft35r,rotate=90,speed=42000000,fps=20


And then you may need to possibly add config snippets for xorg, but that's all laid out in the scripts as well. I'll add using device tree overlays for the next release of the rpi-tft image to make things a little bit easier on people, but one thing you should *never* do on Kali is just blindly run scripts because a page tells you to. ALWAYS read the script, and more importantly, understand exactly what it is that it is changing (bonus points for why).