Backtrack 3 Installation tutorial which is described in this article is divided into 2 parts , which are Backtrack 3 Eee PC Installation and Backtrack 3 USB Stick Installation. The reason why I finally created this article is just because there are a lot of people mail me asking how to install backtrack 3 to hardisk or how to install backtrack 3 to a usb stick. Since I don’t have much time to answer all of those questions , I’ve finally decided to create this article. So , here it is the first part of this backtrack 3 installation tutorial to Eee PC :

Preparing the Flash Drive

1. On the second (NON-Eee PC) computer begin to download the USB version of BT3 from http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html (~784mb). The USB package is an extended version of BackTrack, and when expanded will take up most of our 4Gb SSD (Solid State Disk) in the Eee PC.

Once downloaded, extract the ISO; Windows users can use WinRAR, Linux/OSX just mount the iso:
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -o loop -t iso9660 .iso /mnt/iso

Or use whatever program you like that can mount/extract the folders inside. If you have a DVD, just can simply burn the ISO to dvd using any popular burning program and skip step 2.

2. Copy the “BT3″ and “BOOT” folders to the root of your flashdrive. Once this is done, we need to make this flash drive bootable. The BackTrack3 USB install includes scripts to perform these step for us. These scripts will attempted to locate where the drive is installed, and then copy the grub bootloader onto the flash drive. Once the script has completed you can remove the flash drive. (Unmount if needed)

In Windows:
Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your flash drive. You should see the two folders we previously put on there. Navigate to and double click on the \boot\bootinst.bat (make sure you are on the thumbdrive before you run it!!!)

In Linux:
In your terminal window, navigate to the flash drive. You should see the two folders we previously put on there. Navigate to the boot/ folder. Make the script executable by typing:

chmod +x bootinst.sh

And the execute it.
./bootinst.sh

Booting BackTrack3

3. Insert the flash drive into the EeePC (doesn’t matter which USB port) and turn it on. When the gray “Starting EeePC” screen shows, press the Escape Key ‘Esc’ which will bring up a boot menu, allowing you to select the flash drive as your boot device.

If everything went correctly, you should be presented with the BackTrack Grub loader. Make sure to arrow down and select “BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz) – Experimental.” If an undefined video error comes up, just press SPACE to continue.

At this point, if you would like to keep your stock Xandros OS on your SSD, and only boot BackTrack from the flash drive when you want it, you are done. You will notice however since Backtrack3 is booting from your USB drive, it will be much slower to boot than the default Xandros OS. By following the remainder of this tutorial we will fix that by installing Backtrack3 to your SSD.

4. Once the GUI starts up, open the K menu, and open up the xmms application (in multimedia.) If it has a white outline around it (see screenshot), continue to step 5, if not skip to step 8.
5. Back on the second (NON-Eee PC) computer, download the 14-12-2007 BackTrack 3 Beta USB version.

6. Once downloaded, Mount and/or extract as done before. Navigate to it, and go to “BT3/optional” and copy the cubez.lzm file to the same directory your flash drive, replacing the current file. I-Hacked members do not need to do this as the correct cubez.lzm can be downloaded here.

7. repeat steps 3 and 4.

8. Once Backtrack has booted fully, open a terminal window:

9. Use fdisk again to locate your SSD drive, in order to determine where we will be installing BackTrack3 and create the partitions.

fdisk -l

By default the included 4Gb SSD has 4 partitions on it (hdc1, hdc2, hdc3, hdc4). Since we don’t plan on keeping Xandros, we can simply blow the first two (hdc1 & hdc2) away. Hdc3 & hdc4 are used for Xandros recovery. I don’t plan on ever keeping Xandros on my Eee, so I went ahead and deleted all four and created a single 4gb partition. The choice is up to you, but I figured the BackTrack3 image was so big I wanted to utilize as much SSD space as possible.

fdisk /dev/hdc

First, type ‘p’ to make sure you see those same four partitions we identified earlier. (This step is just a safety step to make sure you are on the correct drive.

Second use the ‘d’ command, and delete all four partitions. (1-4) *Or just the ‘o’ command to create a new empty partition table.

At this point go ahead and do another ‘p’ to print the partition table. It shouldn’t see any “linux” partitions. Now lets create the partition we will install BackTrack on.

Use the command ‘n’, then ‘p’, then ‘1′.

It will now ask you were you want this partition to start and end, since we want the whole drive, the First Cylinder should be ‘1′, and the last should be whatever the last is. (Just hit enter on both of these accepting the defaults)

Now we need to make this partition bootable: type ‘a’ then ‘1′. You might want to do a final ‘p’ to ensure you only have one linux partition. After you are satisfied type ‘w’ to write the changes to the partition table.

At this point, shutdown and restart your Eee. This is just simply a good computing step when partitioning drives. When your Eee is coming back up, don’t forget to hit “Esc” and select your flash drive as the boot device.

At the BackTrack Grub menu, make sure to select the “BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz) – Experimental”

Once BackTrack has finished booting, Open a new command windows and type: ‘fdisk -l’ to identify your SSD. (just like earlier)

10. The next step we need to do, is create the filesystem on the partition that we created earlier.

This might be a good place to discuss which filesystem you should use on your Solid State Disk. Since the flash media used in the Eee’s SSD “degrades” over time (simply a characteristic of Flash media) we want to minimize the amount of write cycles to the drive. There are hundreds of posts & wiki entries arguing which should be used. Some say you should avoid ext3 because it’s journaling function causes writes. These people advise ext2. Personally, I think the integrity risks of ext2 outweigh the reduction in write cycles, and would advise the use of a journaled filesystem. The Xandros install used an ext2 partition for the system files, and ext3 for the home directory. Since we are only making one partition, I chose to go with ext3. It must be stated that Asus has come out and said that the use of Journaled filesystems do NOT void the warranty. Later in this tutorial we will take steps to cut down on some write cycles.

Back In your terminal type:
umount /dev/hdc1

and then
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdc1
(assuming your SSD was identified as hdc)

Once this is finished, we will need to remount the partition, so we can install the Backtack3 OS onto your SSD. (press enter after each command)

mkdir /mnt/bt3

mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/bt3

mkdir /mnt/bt3/boot

11. Previous versions had an install app in the K-Menu, however the BackTrack3 final did not include this app, due to the developers intending for it only be used as a liveCD. In order to install, we must now copy all files from our “LiveCD Session” to our newly partitioned SSD. Make sure your EeePC is connected to AC power, and type the following command on ONE LINE. Note, this can take awhile, and can seem to get stuck at some places. This is where it is unpacking and moving some big files — give it some time to continue (might greater than 10 mins) you will know it is finished when the bt~# prompt is back.

cp –preserve -R /{bin,dev,home,pentest,root,usr,etc,lib,opt,sbin,var} /mnt/bt3

12. Continue the installation by typing the following commands

mkdir /mnt/bt3/{mnt,proc,sys,tmp}
mount –bind /dev/ /mnt/bt3/dev/
mount -t proc proc /mnt/bt3/proc/
cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/bt3/boot/

13. Set up LILO

In order for our BackTrack3 install to boot properly, we need to configure our LILO bootloader. Type the following command:

chroot /mnt/backtrack /bin /bash

(no space between /bin & /bash)

Now you will need to edit the lilo config file. I prefer to use nano but feel free to use whatever editor you like.

nano /etc/lilo.conf

Make your lilo.conf look like this.

lba32
boot = /dev/hdc
change-rules
reset
vga = normal
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hdc1
label = Back|track3

14. Finally, save your changes by executing this command:

lilo -v

You are almost done, but before you reboot, first make a backup copy of /etc/xorg.conf. Either via the command line or with Konquerer navigate to /etc/X11 and copy the xorg.conf to your flash drive. You will need this file later. Make sure to replace sdX1 with where ever your flash drive was mounted (see fdisk -l to identify the location of your flash drive)
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /mnt/sdX1/

Once the installer has completed, and you have backed-up the xorg.conf, shutdown and restart.
K / Log Out

Then shut down (with restart)

shutdown -r now

(Let it go all the way down on its own, don’t hold down the power button) Finally remove the USB drive. On next boot you will boot from your harddrive. Login with user:root pass:toor. then type:

xconf

startx

If everything worked right, your Eee should be booting BackTrack3 from your SSD, and you will soon be terrorizing the neighborhood. (I mean performing penetration tests ><

And for the backtrack 3 usb stick installation tutorial , it ’s not a long tuto to read on , but just have fun ! :

Go to Offensive-Security and get the Backtrack 3 Beta USB rar file, about 946 MB in size.

I got on my Windows XP machine and used WinRAR to uncompress to a folder on my machine.

Copy the BT and BOOT folders to your thumb drive.

If you are on a Windows machine, go into the /boot folder and run bootinst.bat, if you are running Linux or OSX run bootinst.sh. This will set your thumb drive to be bootable.

I am running BT3 on my Dell E1705 laptop with Compiz running. In the grub, it says that this is experimental, but I have not seen any errors as of yet.

Sources : http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/260/1/ , http://linuxnewb.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/install-backtrack-3-on-usb/

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