EDIT: There is a final version of BackTrack4 released, both an ISO image and a VMWare image. Also, backtrack is now distributed from www.backtrack-linux.org instead of remote-exploit.org. I suggest you to download and install the final VMware version.

I have been using BackTrack3 so far for my ethical penetration testing tasks with great success. I decided recently to give BackTrack4 a try, even if it’s still in Pre-Release stage. The guys at remote-exploit state that even if it is pre-final stage, this release is the sturdiest from all previous BackTrack versions so I decided to try it now rather than waiting for the final release. A notable change with BackTrack4 is that it uses Ubuntu now as the underlying operating system which is a very good move in my opinion.

I will explain below the steps I took to install BackTrack4 on VMWare Workstation running on Windows XP Pro. I have used VMWare Workstation 6.5.3 (it should work with older versions) and BackTrack4 pre-final.

First download the BackTrack 4 pre-final file (bt4-pre-final.iso) from its original location from http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html. The file comes in dvd ISO format. Save the iso file locally on your hard disk.

  • Start the VMWare Workstation and go to File>New>Virtual Machine
  • Select Typical Install
  • Select option to use Installer Disc image file (iso)
  • Click the Browse button to find the ISO image that you downloaded above.
  • Click Next, select Linux and for version select Ubuntu.
  • Click Next and select the location where the Virtual Machine will be installed.
  • Leave the defaults (maximum disk size 8GB and Store Virtual disk as a single file).
  • Click Next and Finish.
  • Go to “Edit virtual machine settings” and change the network adapter to “Bridged”.
  • Power on the virtual machine.
  • This will boot up the Live CD from the ISO image and give you several boot options. Select the first option (BackTrack Framebuffer 1024×768).
  • After it boots, it will get you into command line prompt as root@bt:#
  • Type startx
  • This will take you into the graphical interface of BackTrack. However you are still under Live CD. Any changes you make will be lost with next reboot. Therefore you need to install it on the VMWare virtual disk.
  • Double click the “install.sh” script that you see on the desktop. This will start the installation procedure. Follow all steps. This will finally install BackTrack on the VMWare disk.
  • Press “Restart” button to reboot. After rebooting, it will now boot from the VMware disk and not from the Live CD. At the login prompt, enter the username and password that you configured during the graphical installation above.
  • You need to configure a root password here. Type “sudo passwd root”. It will ask you for your own user password to execute the command above. Then it will ask you to enter new password for root (twice). After that, the password for root will be changed.
  • Login as root and get into graphical interface with startx.
  • You are ready to Rock Baby!!!

I advice you to visit the offensive security blog (http://www.offensive-security.com/blog/) to read some very useful posts about BackTrack4. Especially useful is the post about upgrading the Kernel which is required because of a security hole in the default Kernel of bt4.