Kali Linux Virtual Machine Installation on macOS - hawkinsw/CS5138 GitHub Wiki

Kali Linux Virtual Machine Installation on macOS

VirtualBox does not run on non-Intel architectures. Since I own an M1 Macbook, I opted to go for UTM since it was free and it unlike other free virtualization software, it was built for macOS.

Installing UTM

  1. Navigate to https://mac.getutm.app/.
  2. Select the Download button to download the UTM.dmg file and go through the steps to install UTM.

Installing Kali Linux:

  1. Navigate to https://www.kali.org/get-kali.
  2. Scroll down to Kali Linux Changelog where you'll find a tab for Apple M1. Select the tab and download the Kali Linux iso. (Note that Apple Silicon version is named as ARM64, it should have a file name of kali-linux-2022.4-installer-arm64.iso or kali-linux-2022.4-installer-arm32.iso, depending on your laptop. Also note and do not select "Live Boot" option, go with installer)
  3. Open UTM and click on Create new Virtual Machine.
  4. In the information tab, change the name and icon to your liking.
  5. Open the System tab, select ARM64(aarch64) as your architecture. Allocate the RAM according to your liking. I suggest to allocate at least 2GB of RAM.
  6. Click the Drives tab and select Import Drive tab and select the Kali Linux iso you downloaded. Set the interface of this drive to USB.
  7. Click on New Drive and set the interface to NVMe and allocate at least 20GB as the drive size.
  8. Save and run the Kali VM and go throught the necessary steps to install the Kali operating system.
  9. After installation is complete, shut down the operation system and close the VM. Now right click on the Kali Linux VM and click edit.
  10. Go to the Drives tab and delete the drive you selected as USB containing the Kali linux iso.
  11. Save and run the VM.
  12. If Kali fails to boot or boots to a Shell, try disabling gl by going to settings -> display and switching to virtio-ramfb
  13. When you boot into Kali, an interactive UEFI shell will pop up. You can exit the shell by typing the command exit and press enter. From there on you can boot the device in EFI mode. To do that, click on Boot Maintenance Manager => Boot from file => NO VOLUME LABEL => EFI => kali => grubaa64.efi.