linuxserver/kali-linux¶

Kali-linux - is an Advanced Penetration Testing Linux distribution used for Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking and network security assessments. KALI LINUX ™ is a trademark of OffSec.

Supported Architectures¶

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

Application Setup¶

The Kali Linux image can be accessed at:

• http://yourhost:3000/
• https://yourhost:3001/

Modern GUI desktop apps have issues with the latest Docker and syscall compatibility, you can use Docker with the --security-opt seccomp=unconfined setting to allow these syscalls on hosts with older Kernels or libseccomp

Security¶

By default this container has no authentication and the optional environment variables CUSTOM_USER and PASSWORD to enable basic http auth via the embedded NGINX server should only be used to locally secure the container from unwanted access on a local network. If exposing this to the Internet we recommend putting it behind a reverse proxy, such as SWAG, and ensuring a secure authentication solution is in place. From the web interface a terminal can be launched and it is configured for passwordless sudo, so anyone with access to it can install and run whatever they want along with probing your local network.

Options in all KasmVNC based GUI containers¶

This container is based on Docker Baseimage KasmVNC which means there are additional environment variables and run configurations to enable or disable specific functionality.

Optional environment variables¶

Optional run configurations¶

Language Support - Internationalization¶

The environment variable LC_ALL can be used to start this container in a different language than English simply pass for example to launch the Desktop session in French LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8. Some languages like Chinese, Japanese, or Korean will be missing fonts needed to render properly known as cjk fonts, but others may exist and not be installed inside the container depending on what underlying distribution you are running. We only ensure fonts for Latin characters are present. Fonts can be installed with a mod on startup.

To install cjk fonts on startup as an example pass the environment variables (Alpine base):

-e DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-package-install 
-e INSTALL_PACKAGES=fonts-noto-cjk
-e LC_ALL=zh_CN.UTF-8

The web interface has the option for "IME Input Mode" in Settings which will allow non english characters to be used from a non en_US keyboard on the client. Once enabled it will perform the same as a local Linux installation set to your locale.

DRI3 GPU Acceleration (KasmVNC interface)¶

For accelerated apps or games, render devices can be mounted into the container and leveraged by applications using:

--device /dev/dri:/dev/dri

This feature only supports Open Source GPU drivers:

The DRINODE environment variable can be used to point to a specific GPU. Up to date information can be found here

Nvidia GPU Support (KasmVNC interface)¶

Nvidia support is not compatible with Alpine based images as Alpine lacks Nvidia drivers

Nvidia support is available by leveraging Zink for OpenGL support. This can be enabled with the following run flags:

The compose syntax is slightly different for this as you will need to set nvidia as the default runtime:

sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker --set-as-default
sudo service docker restart

And to assign the GPU in compose:

services:
  kali-linux:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [compute,video,graphics,utility]

Application management¶

PRoot Apps¶

If you run system native installations of software IE sudo apt-get install filezilla and then upgrade or destroy/re-create the container that software will be removed and the container will be at a clean state. For some users that will be acceptable and they can update their system packages as well using system native commands like apt-get upgrade. If you want Docker to handle upgrading the container and retain your applications and settings we have created proot-apps which allow portable applications to be installed to persistent storage in the user's $HOME directory and they will work in a confined Docker environment out of the box. These applications and their settings will persist upgrades of the base container and can be mounted into different flavors of KasmVNC based containers on the fly. This can be achieved from the command line with:

proot-apps install filezilla

PRoot Apps is included in all KasmVNC based containers, a list of linuxserver.io supported applications is located HERE.

Native Apps¶

It is possible to install extra packages during container start using universal-package-install. It might increase starting time significantly. PRoot is preferred.

  environment:
    - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-package-install
    - INSTALL_PACKAGES=libfuse2|git|gdb

Usage¶

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)¶

---
services:
  kali-linux:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest
    container_name: kali-linux
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined #optional
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - SUBFOLDER=/ #optional
      - "TITLE=Kali Linux" #optional
    volumes:
      - /path/to/data:/config
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock #optional
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
      - 3001:3001
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri #optional
    shm_size: "1gb" #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)¶

docker run -d \
  --name=kali-linux \
  --security-opt seccomp=unconfined `#optional` \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -e SUBFOLDER=/ `#optional` \
  -e TITLE="Kali Linux" `#optional` \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -p 3001:3001 \
  -v /path/to/data:/config \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock `#optional` \
  --device /dev/dri:/dev/dri `#optional` \
  --shm-size="1gb" `#optional` \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest

Parameters¶

Containers are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

Ports (-p)¶

Environment Variables (-e)¶

Volume Mappings (-v)¶

Device Mappings (--device)¶

Miscellaneous Options¶

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)¶

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__MYVAR=/run/secrets/mysecretvariable

Will set the environment variable MYVAR based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretvariable file.

Umask for running applications¶

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

User / Group Identifiers¶

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id your_user as below:

id your_user

Example output:

uid=1000(your_user) gid=1000(your_user) groups=1000(your_user)

Docker Mods¶

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info¶

• Shell access whilst the container is running:

  docker exec -it kali-linux /bin/bash
  

• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:

  docker logs -f kali-linux
  

• Container version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' kali-linux
  

• Image version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest
  

Updating Info¶

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (noted in the relevant readme.md), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup section above to see if it is recommended for the image.

Below are the instructions for updating containers:

Via Docker Compose¶

• Update images:

  • All images:

    docker-compose pull
    

  • Single image:

    docker-compose pull kali-linux
    

• Update containers:

  • All containers:

    docker-compose up -d
    

  • Single container:

    docker-compose up -d kali-linux
    

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Via Docker Run¶

• Update the image:

  docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest
  

• Stop the running container:

  docker stop kali-linux
  

• Delete the container:

  docker rm kali-linux
  

• Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)¶

Building locally¶

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-kali-linux.git
cd docker-kali-linux
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/kali-linux:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x86_64 hardware and vice versa using lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static

docker run --rm --privileged lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.

To help with development, we generate this dependency graph.

Versions¶

• 24.01.25: - Fix SVG icons not rendering.
• 18.07.24: - Initial release.