Kali Linux Screen Resolution

Kali Linux is an operating system that is - without any doubt - a very useful tool for everyone that is in the IT business. It contains tools to not only check the security of systems but also help examine  and troubleshooting network issues, application issues etc.

I've always used Microsoft Windows as my primary operating system and since Hyper-V is available out of the box the last few years, all my virtual machines are running on Hyper-V.

Installing Kali Linux 2 on a virtual machine is pretty straight forward, assign the .iso file to the virtual machine's drive, start it and follow the setup wizard.

The Hyper-V drivers are part of the operating system, but you have to enable them manually by editing the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file and adding the following lines:

hv_vmbus
hv_storvsc
hv_blkvsc
hv_netvsc

After saving the file, execute the update-initramfs –u command for changes to take effect and reboot the virtual machine.

To verify that the drivers are loaded, use the lsmod | grep hv command. You should see a bunch of hyper-v drivers.

This however will not adjust your screen resolution in order for Virtual Machine Connection to display the virtual machine in full screen. You have to set the resolution manually by editing the /etc/default/grub file.

Open the file using your favorite text editor and locate the line starting with:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= and replace the value with ”quiet splash video=hyperv_fb:1920×1080″ assuming that the resolution of your screen is 1920x1080 and update your GRUB configuration executing the update-grub command. 

Again, reboot in order for changes to be applied. Hopefully, the full screen on virtual machine connection will take exactly the space available on your screen.

Popular posts from this blog

Domain Controller Machine Password Reset

Image
On my lab environment, I've configured two Active Directory sites since most enterprises have offices in more that one places. My lab however is not running 24/7 and the domain controllers in the second site are rarely turned on in order to save resources. This leads to issues with the Active Directory replication such as the "The target principal name is incorrect" error when I execute:  repadmin /syncall /AdeP. To remedy the issue, we have to reset the machine password of the domain controller that has been offline. First off, we are going to stop and disable the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (kdc) service on the problematic domain controller, in our case DC4. There may be some tickets in the cache so we should also clear them using klist purge Now it's time to change the machine password of the domain controller using the command netdom resetpwd /s:dc3 /ud:lab\administrator /pd:* Replace the "lab\administrator" with an account on your...
Keep reading

Managing Active Directory User Certificates using PowerShell

I first came across user certificates when I was working with email certificates a few years ago and I have to admit that I had trouble updating the certificates on the objects! Most organizations have a Microsoft Active Directory Certification Authority that issues the certificates used internally. When a certificate is issued to a user, the Microsoft Certificate Service saves the public key in Active Directory. The userCertificate attribute is a multi-valued attribute that contains the DER-encoded X509v3 certificates issued to the user. Although we rarely need to pay attention to this attribute, there are cases where we have to update it. To make things easier, I've written PowerShell functions to Get, Remove, Import and Export the certificates on that field. To get the list of certificates for an object, use the Get-ActiveDirectoryObjectCertificate function: PS C:\> Get-ActiveDirectoryObjectCertificate -UserPrincipalName cpolydorou@lab.local DistinguishedName  ...
Keep reading

Configuring a Certificate on Exchange Receive Connector

Today's article is about configuring Exchange receive connectors with specific certificates. Out of the box, Exchange uses self signed certificates to provide TLS secured mail flow. This will definitely be an issue if you expose the SMTP protocol to client computers since they won't trust the certificate. In this article we are going to configure a certificate that was issued by a third part authority to the Client Frontend receive connector. We'll start with getting the thumbprint of the certificate using the Get-ExchangeCertificate cmdlet: [PS] C:\> Get-ExchangeCertificate Thumbprint                               Subject ----------                               ------- 241B864DC82C664FECBA18B8D54987AAFB65B4C2 CN=*.lab.com, ... D4D210886B34E690191A1F008C78FDD0E7325DD4 CN=Exchange2013A 960171662EB26116...
Keep reading