Installing Backtrack

Tutorial 1: Installing Backtrack 5 to a Hard drive.
Tutorial 2: Installing Backtrack 5 to a Virtual Machine.
Tutorial 3: Installing Backtrack 5 via USB.

Installing Backtrack 5 to a Hard Drive

Head over to: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/downloads/ and download the BackTrack ISO and burn it to a bootable DVD or flash drive.
-Registering is up to you, just click “download” to skip.

-Selection Backtrack 5, Gnome or KDE (if you are not sure between the two, I find Gnome to be better), Pick between 32 or 64 bit (we’ll be using 32bit), ISO, and Direct.

Boot your laptop or desktop with the DVD or Flash drive inserted and press your boot options key (normally F12) and select CD Rom or Removable Flash drive.

Select BackTrack Text – Default Boot Text Mode

Backtrack will do some stuff then you should see the BackTrack console screen. Type startx to load the GUI screen.

Now double-click the Install BackTrack icon on the top-left of the screen. This will run the Backtack installer.

Run through the installer. It’s not too complicated, except when it comes to selecting a drive (Will cover dual booting later). For this example, we will just use the entire hard drive. WARNING: This will delete any data on that drive. Also, the installer will stop a 99%. This is normal! It will stay at 99% for several minutes.

Once the computer restarts, remove the CD/Flashdrive and you will see the login screen for BackTrack. Login as “root” and the password as “toor“. Use the startx command to get into the GUI. There you have it! Backtrack 5 is install on your computer.

Installing Backtrack 5 to a Virtual Machine.

Download the iso file as noted above and have a virtual machine program. You can use either VMware or Virtual Box as your virtual machine software. I will be using VMware but the two programs are very similar.

Fire up the software of your choosing and click File -> New -> Virtual Machine. You will then see a window asking for which type of installation you would like. For this example we will use the Typical Install. Click next.

Next you want to select where you are installing from. In this case we are installing from a disc image (iso). Select that and click browse, then navigate to where you saved your iso file.

Click next, VMware will then ask you to select the guest operating system. Select Linux and for the version you can pick Ubuntu since backtrack is very similar to Ubuntu.

Click next. Give a name for you virtual machine and where you want the hard drive to be saved.

 Click next. VMware will then ask you to pick a hard drive capacity. Since I will be using backtrack just for testing, I do not need a large hard drive, so I will leave it at 20 gigs. As for storing as a single file, or split into multiple files, that is up to you. I will be using single file because I do not plan on moving the this VM to another machine.

Click next and you will see a review of your virtual machine, click finish and it will create the virtual machine for you. Refer to tutorial 1 for the backtrack install process.

Installing Backtrack 5 on a USB

Required Items:

• A USB flash drive with minimum space of 4 GB.
• Backtrack 5 ISO
• UNetbooin

UNetbootin is a program that allows you to create bootable USB drives for linux distros and Windows. UNetbootin will download the distribution or use an ISO file you selected from your hard drive.

1. Once UNetbootin is downloaded you can run it by double clicking (Windows)
2. Plug in your USB Drive.
3. Start UNetbooin and select the “diskimage” option, then select your Backtrack 5 ISO.
4. Select your USB Drive, then click “OK”.
   WARNING: This will format your USB Drive and remove all previous data.

Now you should be able to boot off of your USB Drive with Backtrack 5.