The following document describes our own method of creating a custom Kali Linux Raspberry Pi ARM image and is targeted at developers. If you would like to install a pre-made Kali image, check out our Install Kali on Raspberry Pi article.
01. Create a Kali rootfs
Build a Kali rootfs as described in our Kali documentation, using an armel architecture. By the end of this process, you should have a populated rootfs directory in ~/arm-stuff/rootfs/kali-armel.
02. Create the Image File
Next, we create the physical image file, which will hold our Raspberry Pi rootfs and boot images.
cd ~
mkdir -p arm-stuff
cd arm-stuff/
mkdir -p images
cd images
dd if=/dev/zero of=kali-custom-rpi.img bs=1MB count=5000
03. Partition and Mount the Image File
parted kali-custom-rpi.img --script -- mkpart primary fat32 0 64
parted kali-custom-rpi.img --script -- mkpart primary ext4 64 -1
device=`kpartx -va $loopdevice| sed -E 's/.*(loop[0-9])p.*/\1/g' | head -1`
device="/dev/mapper/${device}"
bootp=${device}p1
rootp=${device}p2
mkfs.vfat $bootp
mkfs.ext4 $rootp
mkdir -p root
mkdir -p boot
mount $rootp root
mount $bootp boot
04. Copy and Modify the Kali rootfs
echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 > root/etc/resolv.conf
05. Compile the Raspberry Pi Kernel and Modules
If you’re not using ARM hardware as the development environment, you will need to set up an ARM cross-compilation environment to build an ARM kernel and modules. Once that’s done, proceed with the following instructions.
mkdir -p kernel
cd kernel
git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools.git
git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux.git raspberrypi
cd raspberrypi
export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=~/arm-stuff/kernel/toolchains/arm-eabi-linaro-4.6.2/bin/arm-eabi-
make bcmrpi_cutdown_defconfig
# configure your kernel !
make menuconfig
make -j$(cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep processor|wc -l)
make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=~/arm-stuff/images/root
cd ../tools/mkimage/
python imagetool-uncompressed.py ../../raspberrypi/arch/arm/boot/Image
git clone git://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware.git rpi-firmware
cp -rf rpi-firmware/boot/* boot/
rm -rf rpi-firmware
cp ~/arm-stuff/kernel/tools/mkimage/kernel.img boot/
echo "dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 rootwait" > boot/cmdline.txt
umount $bootp
kpartx -dv $loopdevice
losetup -d $loopdevice
Use the dd utility to image this file to your SD card. In our example, we assume the storage device is located at /dev/sdb. Change this as needed.
Once the dd operation is complete, unmount and eject the SD card and boot your Pi into Kali Linux
