How To: Install Kali Live on a USB Drive (With Persistence, Optional)

Fantastic read! Thorough analysis, great detail! Thank you!

I'm glad you liked it :)

Awesome post KITTEN. I think you gave the exact amount of detail necessary. Can't wait to read your partition guide - I've been planning on triple boot my systems for a while but lacked the exact know how.

Keep it up ma friend

It would be cool to have a tutorial on triple boot I guess, but I understand know what you meant :).

hey when i create the partition on the usb, my computer is not able to read my usb. When i take away the partition you talked about above, my computer is able to read my usb, but then without the partition, i cant save anything. To wrap it up, make partition, computer cant read my usb, when i take away the partition, my computer is able to read my usb but i cant save anything in kali linux.

Please help

Nice tutorial Kitten! :)

I am just wondering why not to boot your system with Kali Live CD and install it in USB instead of HDD? I am just wondering why not. Could there be some issues if I start moving my USB through different PCs? I am not sure how kernel would deal with that in the long term solution.

I have this setup in so far I have been using it without any issues.

Well, that0s what Persistence is all about!!

If you set up Persistence and select that option when booting up on any PC, you'll get to boot it just as you left it last time you used it, but it'll load drivers for the PC you're using everytime :)

What this tutorial is about is installing the "Kali Live CD" on a USB, not the OS. If you installed the OS, then your PC depends on your USB drive to boot up. That's pretty unreliable, I wouldn't reccomend it.

I'm from Pakistan I want to install Kali Linux but the location is showing in the list.
What I should do?
Plz guide me. I will wait for your suggestion.

Great tutorial! I don't think that there is a tutorial on Null-byte on setting up Kali Live. I also like it that you are including a section on setting up persistency, so that you can return to your OS the same it was before!

Well, there is this post, that made me fear mine would get deleted for repeating information, but I felit like it was too general and not newbie-friendly enough with this subject.

Ciuffy delves into many ways of using Kali (CD, USB, VM, Dual-boot) and configuring MBR for BIOS and EFI. He even wrote a FAQ!

hi
please help me

the nvidia driver is drive me crazy i am new for the linux os (kali) and i tried every thing to install the nvidia driver and nothing worked .please some one help me .thanx

my video card is nvidia Geforce 710m

Well, this isn't directly related to my article, but...

I know there are reasons to install a proprietary driver for Kali, but don't go crazy on that, there' still loads of things you can do if you can't install them. Or Google your problem, I found this article from BlackOps that seems to cover what you want to do pretty well.

Cheeers.

thank u very much i know it is not very important but i need it for the hdmi any way i shall try this and thank u very much for your help ...

Excellent guide! As someone who always uses a VM. I will definitely be trying this soon. Thanks for posting.

Thanks! Unless you use VM because you have a hacking lab set up in it, this is way better in every way.

Hi everybody, i'd recommend using an USB 3.0 stick with persistence or else you'll have a pretty slow and unusable live persistence. Some folks on IRC told me getting USB 3.0 for persistence was bullshit but that makes a HUUUGE difference even when using it on USB 2.0 ports. I personnally got a 10€ USB 3.0 Kingston 16GB stick and it's working pretty well even with full encryption on the USB stick. That's just an advice in case someone want to buy a key with the aim of getting persistence on it. ;)

EDIT: BTW, great tutorial for beginners ! Good job Kitten ! :)

Yeah, I was wondering about that. All my USB drives (excepting my external HDD) are 2.0, and neither my desktop nor my laptop have USB 3.0 ports.

But as far as I knew, if you plug a USB3 into a USB2 port, it'll work at USB2 speed. And if you plug a USB2 into a USB3 port, it'll work, because of backward compatibility, but at USB2 speed, still. I guess I'll only know for sure when I get one of those 3.0 USB drives :)

that's good but something i wanna ask:

by this is Kali functions work correctly once i did that to Ubuntu but many actions were disabled, what about Kali then?

Actions such as?

can i save all the settings ,updates etc on it?

Yep. And as Charly up there said, it's works way faster if you get a USB 3.0 drive and plug it into a 3.0 port

Thanks for your post. But is there any way for MAC?

Probably, but as I don't own one, I don't know it it's possible.

how long should i wait?

Look for this button in the upper left side of the program :)

oh ,i didn't see it.sorry.

error !

Yours might be sdb2, or sdb1. I used sdc 1 because I have two HDD in my computer. Check what's your thumbdrive letter with fdisk -l. It will have a Linux partition and a W95 FAT one. The one you want to make persistent is the Linux one.

You must have mounted the drive.

Hello. Can someone please help! I have downloaded the correct 64bit ISO for kali Linux, I then used a 4GB USB and wrote the program to it using Win32 Disc imager. I booted from the advanced settings and I keep getting a message that says USB not authenticated. I have Windows 8 and I have a HP laptop. What is the problem. So far I have tried numerous times with no success. I'm not sure what the problem is.

There must be something in your BIOS that's stopping it from booting. Maybe something called secure boot?

Thank you. Do you know how I would change that setting?

I actually found success. Thank you Kitten. Now all I have to do is learn how to use the new OS.

Great!
Good luck with that small task you're willing to accomplish :)

Problem is you're trying to boot in UEFI secure mode :) Try by disabling it from your BIOS

I finished the last step and my computer restarted. When it booted the linux menu appears. Is it should be like that and every time I should choose usb persistence? or did I do somting wrong?

You must choose USB Persistence every time, unless you want a live session that doesn't leave anything after it halts.

One simple test to check if it worked would be:
· Open a Terminal.
· Enter the command: touch testfile
· Reboot
· Enter with USB Persistence again
· Open a Terminal, and enter the command: ls

If testfile appears listed, congratulations, you did it well :)

Thank you I'll try that.

hello kiten
it din't showed any testfile
what i have to do please reply

Great i managed to save files into "pesistence" the unlabeled partition we mad..
But i can't save me settings ..for example when i change time then reboot...i find the initial system time
Or when i change the backgound then reboot i find the original background
Or when i update some programs and reboot
I find my programs without my updates
Is that normal??
Help me please

Ddi you do the part of "Configuring the partition"?

I think I did but when typing this command
mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/myusb
It didn't work untill I modified it into
mount. -t /dev/sdc2 /mnt/myusb
I added "-t"
And also chnaged sdc2 into sdb2 as i have it

You forgot to put a space in the mount command.

mount /dev/sdb2<HERE GOES A SPACE>/mnt/my_usb

Then continue the process...

Spaces are important.
You also wrote /union instead of / union after that.

Thank you
Every thing work well

I have a problem which I unable to solve. I am newbie using kali live and mistakenly I typed /union and I can't edit the persistence.conf I tried with root but it can't changed to / union please solve it.

Wait will this also work on the new Kali Linux 2.0 Live? (which i CANNOT wait for?)

Let me consult my crystal ball...

I can't see it clearly, it'll probably be possible, but a different method may be needed.

well, I hope as they release 2.0, they make update their Kali Linux docs .

After i add a kali linux with persistence in a usb device i can add more OS like tails and windows in same usb device?

You can add them with YUMI instead of Universal USB Installer, and then get persistence...

I did everything as per the steps given...did the procedure for persistence too...but when i tried to boot kali from the usb, it just shows a message "Boot error" just below the "Verifying DMI pool data.." message. Kali boot screen didnt even show up.

Did i do something wrong? Or is it my PC?

My PC details....

Thanks in advance... :)

BTW I'm trying to install kali 2.0 with persistence

I got it to boot....

But pls include instructions for making the persistence encrypted

Again Thanks in advance... :)

+1

I also like to see instructions on how to encrypt the persistence ;)

Thanks

Great article this is what I was looking for :) Would you mind uploading for the Live Encrypted Persistence please? :)

Your instructions were not over detailed. I greatly appreciate that you wrote this. I didn't read ahead however... I didn't see the part where you said not to click on the persistence folder on the desktop til it was too late. What does clicking on that folder do? When I try the mount command I receive the error that the path can't be found in /etc/fstab. Any help here greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I did everything right, however after choosing Live USB Persistence, the screen looks like it's booting and then suddenly it becomes this:

And that's all. Nothing happens. Later when I click esc or backspace it goes between two images similiar to this and that's the end. Can't open a Terminal, can't do anything.

Help?

How do I become a member of null byte

Hello guys.

I have 1 problem. I wanted to create bootable USB linux kali device. When i would have USB in my PC i could run linux by going in boot menu and select USB. So i downloaded linux kalix64.iso and wrote it with Win32 Disk Imager on 32GB USB. I restarted pc and i came in Bott menu. There i selected USB boot. I installed Linux from USB. After installing it i wanted to go back on Windows 10. I turned off PC and unpluged USB. Then i turned on pc and i got this message:

"error: no such device: d75a65fc-e4f5-4b25-9cb4-a82efc6bbb8f.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue> "

Then i turned off my pc and turned it on with USB in it. So it took me to GNU GRUB there i could chose between Linux Kali and Windows 8 (loader) (na/dev/sda1). So now i cant go in any OS without USB in my PC.

Plz help me.
Thank you for answer and sorry for my bad English

Thanks for this article ,
but I have a problem with creating ext4 partition:

Could you please help me with this ?

have you figured this problem out yet? Im running into the same issue. i got Kali 2. loaded it onto my 16gb lexar usb. when i boot up i can run kali Live but the partition wizard wont let me create a persistence partition. i get the exact same error you posted in the image above. Please let me know if you figured it out

Try fullwipe. Then partition into FAT32 and EXT4 before you install kali

Thanks for the awesome article.

I have a question. I was wondering, if I can create the persistence derive in my HDD. Is is possible to have persistence space in HDD and use it while Live booting from a USB.

Actually I am not being able to setup Kali 2 in my HDD, because of CDROM not found issue. So I was wondering if this method can be applied.

Thanks in advance :)

I had the same CDROM issue, when you get to the retry part, unplug the USB. Then plug it back in and wait for a few seconds before pressing retry, Done!

Hello, i have an ask. First, i say: i installed kali on a vm but the vm was really bugged and now i want to install in a usb. Kali is bugged here too? Is an iso installation problem? Thanks and sorry my english xD

Went to the UUI website downloaded the wrong file and BOOM! 1-855-402-4168 Popup! They really are a pain in the a$$. And right before I have to got to work. Good thing there is nothing on that computer, (I may be a nooooob but I know that much). Live and learn.

hi, sorry for bothering...I tried
mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/my_usb

but it says:

NTFS Signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb2': Invalid argument.
The device '/dec/sdb2' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.

What should I do next?

So after my first little mishap... I followed the first part of the post and got Kali live on my USB! Tweaked my BIOS to load it. After I played around in Kali and doing a little more home work, I tackled the USB partition. No problems at all.

Thanks Kitten for this awesomely written post.
BUT... I have a problem. IDK what I want to do in Kali first!

Firstly learn commands to use in terminal; start with the linux basics guide on this very webiste. Then move on to metasploit.

Hey i was wondering if the process becomes easier if you do the step 4 in UUI, "Set a persistent file size for storing changes" option.I am using v. 1.9.6.3 of UUi so the option must have been added later on.does that save you the hassle of using MiniTool Partition Wizard?

EDIT : My bad,that option was showing just for Ubuntu.

I have done exactly as mentioned above but it is not working .Can any one say mewhat the problem is ?

I have downloaded it to my pc but it doesn't have option of kali linux in the list what should i do kindly help me to install kali linux in my pc.thankz

Scroll down the list.... Kali is under 'Security and Penetration Testing'

Please help me... i have successfully made a bootable kali linux 2.0 usb.. everything works fine... except the network(internet access through broadband connection)... is there any solution to this problem? thanks in advance

Are any networks showing up, or are they showing but you can't connect to them?

Whenever I create a live usb with the universal USB installer, they don't work. I can make a working live usb with win32 disk imager, however it removes the device name so it's just called D: so what would I call the disk while using the command line to create persistence?

I get to the point where I create the unallocated space on my USB stick, and I right click that space and hit 'Create' but I get an error: "MiniTool Partition Wizard cannot create a new partition on this removable disk. If you like to create several partitions on this removable disk, you need to delete all the partitions first."

help anyone? I have burned the iso in uui and managed the partitions appropriately in partition manager in windows, but when I reboot and press f9 (hp laptop) to go to the list of bootable drives, usb ain't there. I have tried turning on legacy support, I have tried turning off secure boot, I have tried moving usb up in the boot priority list, I have pressed shift+restart in windows and selected "boot usb" option (it just says it fails when I try that), and I have no idea what to do. When I turned on legacy, usb does show u as option, but if i select it, hp says "selected boot drive failed to authenticate." I tried this all on a 2.0 64 GB usb and now I have a 3.0 64GB usb, both have been formatted before I started the project with every format out there. Can someone please help?

I have the same problem.

Hello, if you have UEFI bios open that (I use f10, I don't know on your pc) and move on "system" or "system configure" or other, scroll down on "boot options" or "boot menu" or other and disable "legacy boot". Now a menu bicome blue: modifie it and at the first transport " usb diskette" and do it with the second menu. Restart the pc et voilà :) sorry my english :c

thanks you so much.

Thank you so much for these well presented, detailed instructions!

Unfortunately, I have a problem - even though I followed everthing to the letter, and received ZERO errors (except when I omitted a space in the same place someone else that posted earlier did) - everything works perfectly except - no persistence. It would be much easier to help me if I could offer some sort of error message etc.. but I have none.

The only think I could think to do that might be of help was that I checked the contents of persistence.conf - it contains (without the single quotes): '/ union'

I positioned the cursor after the text to make sure there was no white space after the text.

I'm absolutely positive that I was dealing with the correct partition ( I ran fdisk -l and paid attention - I didn't just mindlessly choose the same drive as the demo, although it was coincidentally exactly the same :) )

Everything seems exactly as it should be yet - no persistence. No saving the configurations made to the web browser, no saving the CA certificate in the browser from Burpsuite.

I am clueless as to trouble shoot this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT:

I wanted to add some screen shots that may be helpful - does anything look amiss here?

Thanks again!

Worked for me the first try, which doesn't ever happen for me. Thanks

Hello there. I've managed to successfully save downloaded files to the "persistence" folder that was created to the desktop, -it's the only folder that can save anything permanently- but I still have an issue with the system changes. Specifically, when I change the background or the security settings and that sort of things, they are all gone after the reboot. Any ideas?

P.S.
I owe you a BIG Thank You for the tutorial!!

I have followed all the steps, however When I go to boot from my USB, the USB device doesn't show up and no matter what I select, it boots to windows as normal. pls Help. first time

I got to mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/myusb so I put mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/sdb2 and it said mount: special device /dev/sdc2 does not exist (a path prefix is not a directory)_

You'll need to use lsblk to determine what device your USB stick is.

I made exactly as in the guide but i have a huge problem! After i boot up Kali live usb with persistence everything seems fine except for one thing... my root folder shows only 2GB of free space as available... i use gparted and there i see 10gb for primary and the rest for persistance... when i used the command "sudo apt-get upgrade" it failed in the end for not having enough disk space... now after that command i have like 27 MB left on root folder... or "Computer" in the "other" section... what should I do to rezolve that? Thanks and sorry for the inconveniences!

Great tutorial! Last night, when I was really tired, I tried it, and accidentally formatted the drives on my OS X laptop to EXT4, which not only erased my data, but OS X can't read any kind of EXT data, so I had to reinstall OS X. Oh well! Thanks for the tutorial!

The command of unmount usb and reboot is not running....it says tha unmount :command not found
Pls help me asap

Step 1: k

Did you get anywhere I'm stuck here

use umount instead of unmount........

Hello! When I do this, it just creates an apparent drive that follows my system through reboots. The stuff that I insert into there is saved completely, between systems and reboots, but everywhere else like the settings and the desktop (and more importantly installed tools like shellter) are simply thrown. I followed these instructions to the point where I copypasted commands. The only difference was that I made a 24gb partition (28gb drive) instead of a 4gb partition. Help?

I did this last night but there was something wrong with the nullbyte servers so I couldn't comment. LOL.

Thanks, worked fine for me.
Is it possible to update a persistence live USB?
Like apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade?

yes

I followed the instructions for windows, and my usb looks like this:

I am not sure if it will boot kali linux. Have I done anything wrong?

can i done all the steps on window

Thank you Kitten, Nice tutorial.
But I have a question.

I follow all step in this tutorial. But I still can't save a file in root folder. I mean, I try to save a text file in /root, but After rebooting my text file is not there. Then I try to save a text file again to /union folder and rebooting, And my text file in there in /union folder and saved successfully. Is this true that I can't save in /root folder, but i can save in /union folder ?? If that true, is it means i must update my Kali everytime after reboot ??

Are you sure the persistence icon disappears after reboot? If not, you have to start it again.

i follow all step but i stuck after choose usb presistent, i can't login need username and password
what username and password??

https://docs.kali.org/introduction/kali-linux-default-passwords root:toor

I need help.. After following all procedure and finally getting to the echo "/ union" then enter and then /mnt/my_usb/persistence.conf.. It returned bash: /mnt/my usb/persistence.conf: No such file or directory

Please what do I do.. I am certain to have followed all the procedures accordingly.

Please tell me if the usb will still be usable like a normal usb. I have a 16gb usb drive so I am thinking of using 6 GB for kali linux and rest for myself. Will it work out?

i did everything according to how you wrote above but i am unable to save my files. for example i try to save text file on my desktop but when i reboot, the file is gone. i need help please help me.

Hi, question from a beginner: are there any additional risk live booting from USB compared to a VM if I mess up with Kali? For example malware spreading from Kali to my Windows host? Thanks in advance for your answers!

so i've tried to do this about a dozen times, both encrypted and non-encrypted, and once i reboot the persistence is no longer locateable and none of the files i've saved as test docs are saved on the desktop.

I tried remounting the drive but nothing works.

can anyone help me?

It wont boot it keeps giving me this

sure that minitool partition wizard worked for partitionioning usb pretty quick but it also installed malware on the system ! all kinds of problems, lag, blank screen, etc afterwards; new chromium browser installed as default without permission, after advertised "anti-virus" was declined. new processes like CACE remote packet capture running when they never did before.

Hey, you should untick the unwanted programs that come with the installer. How do you want to become a whitehat if you fall for such cheap tricks?

Or, also, you could install Unchecky on your computer, to evade most "unwanted ticks" on installers. I have it, but I check on every installer anyways.

Will this work with Parrot OS?

Hello Kitten
Thanks for the wonderful write-up and clear picture directions.

I followed the article and got it working on a 32 bit windows 10. But when I tried to boot the same USB on a 64 bit windows 10, it got stuck on the black page, just reeling up some numbered error message ending with "ffffffffff"

In this article, you said that 32 bit ISO file should also work on 64 bit computers.
Can you help please?
Thanks

hi! I got this working, but I dont know if I have a problem or if it is a limitation.

I can save files to the persistence drive, but any settings I make are not saved.
my .conf file has / union (with a space between the / and union)
im trying to install kali linux 2018.4 i386

when I mount, I dont see any icons on the desktop, but ive read that this version wont show icons.

can someone please advise? im at my wits end trying to get this to work

Sounds like it is intended - otherwise google!

"with persistence" I think means that you cant save anything on it. It is like library pc, nothing is saved after you shut down.

"no evidence" you can call it.

Also if you do something that make your kali linux corrupt the USB may work fine if you plug it back in after a pc reboot :)

"For this tutorial, I'll assume you're starting from a PC with Windows installed, as most newbies do."

Hahahaha, the brutal honesty.

We are on our way master!

Linux is god!

Windows is world Elite NSA bullshit!

Hi. I downloaded kali 64 bit and i used it so many time. But when i downloaded 32 bit Version of that or other linuxs (like siltaz and bionic pupy) and wrote them with several apps i saw the (unvalid boot. INI)error, when tried to boot on an old Laptop with win xp. I understanded something :in iso file of kali 64 bit, We have some files like win 32 loader and gl2dr. Mbr and... But in 32 bit Version of itself and siltaz and bionic pupy, We have not them to load from windows. What shall i do?

I have an 8gb pendrive in which,7.3gb available..........................
Can i do that persistence thing......?????

What happens if i do that install on hdd partition by selecting show all disks?

Can I do this in a CD in which I have burned the image ?

It didn't work :(
Has anything changed in the newer versions of partition wizard?