How to install Backtrack 4 R1 in VMWARE

So I decided to have a look at the latest Backtrack release (Backtrack 4 R1) which is claimed to be the best version released so far from the backtrack community. With the new Linux kernel version 2.6.34 and with significant overall improvements, this release is worth checking out. I always use the virtual machine option so that to play with it and then install the image on a hard disk by its own. Let us see below how I installed Backtrack 4 R1 on a VMWare virtual machine:

The specifications of my hardware and software are the following:

• Laptop DELL (core i3 with 4GB RAM)
• Win7 64-bit Professional
• VMWARE Workstation version 6.5.4

STEPS:

1. Download file from http://www.backtrack-linux.org/downloads/

File downloaded is bt4-r1-vm.tar.bz2 (around 2.5 GBytes)

2. Check the file with md5.exe tool to verify that MD5 is correct. This is important because such big files sometimes get corrupted when downloaded and also to verify the integrity of the file.

3. Uncompress the image with WinRAR (it took some time for winrar to open the archive – Be patient here.)

4. In VMWARE go to File>Open and select the virtual machine (BT4-R1) which you extracted above.

5. I then selected “Edit Virtual machine settings” and increased the memory from 768MB to 1024MB.

6. Then click on “Power on the virtual machine”
If you get a message that “This virtual machine may have been moved or copied” I selected “I copied it”.

7. After the Virtual machine boots up, you will get a prompt:

bt login:

Use root/toor as initial username/password

You will get the root prompt:

root@bt:~#

Now we must change the root password to something really strong.

root@bt:~# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

8. Now do the fix-splash as advised by the backtrack website:

root@bt:~# fix-splash

And then reboot

root@bt:~# reboot now

9. After the machine boots up, start the graphical interface:

root@bt:~# startx

DONE

Some other notes:

I like to have my virtual machine with direct access to the network interface of my host computer, so I always go to the virtual machine settings (“Edit Virtual machine settings”) and change the network adapter from “NAT” to “Bridged Mode“. With that, the LAN interface of the Backtrack in the virtual machine will have direct access to the network. If you have a DHCP server in the network, the Backtrack system will receive IP from the network, or otherwise you can configure static IP. Let’s see how to do both options below:

IP address from DHCP Server

ifconfig eth0 up
dhclient eth0

Static IP

ifconfig eth0 100.100.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
route add default gw 100.100.100.2 eth0

Also, you need to edit the /etc/resolv.conf file and change the nameserver line to add your DNS IP address.