Ethan Chiu My personal blog

Tutorial for Creating a Live Persistence USB on Mac OSX (El Capitan)

15 May 2016

This is a crosspost from my Kali Linux Forums post

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately my first post about my sucess with using Mac Linux Loader was short lived . I had a lot of issues with memory storage and wifi. So, I started over from scratch. Now after a whole week of trying many if not all tutorials, I have finally found a way to make live usb persistence work on OSX . So, I thought I’d share it with the Kali Forum to see if anyone else is successful with this way.

Here are the following methods which did not work for me (I’m using a Macbook air 2015 with El Calpitan):

  • Using Mac Linux Loader didn’t work for persistence for some reason
  • Using Ubuntu to create live usb and partition.
  • Using Windows to create live usb and partition.

Here is the hardware/software I used to make this work:

So, here is a list of steps I followed for creating the USB Persistence:

  1. Downloaded 64GB Kali image from official website with torrent. Then verified the SHA1SUM.
  2. I followed this: http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kal…ve-usb-install
  3. Disabled SIP by booting OSX in recovery (Hold Command + R while rebooting). When “OS X Utilities” shows up, I loaded Terminal up and typed: ` csrutil disable; reboot `
  4. I installed rEFInd and ran it.
  5. I opened up Finder and navigate to the boot folder and changed syslinux.cfg so that instead of vesamenu.c32 the default is menu.c32.
  6. Rebooted computer.
  7. rEFInd boot screen loads up and I choose the Kali EFI drive
  8. I enter Kali Live.
  9. Then I type in the terminal: gparted
  10. I saw /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 with Kali Live. I pressed “unallocated space” and pressed “new” (under partition).
  11. I labeled the partition “persistence” and chose “ext4” as the file system.
  12. I then typed these commands:
    • mkdir -p /mnt/my_usb
    • mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/my_usb
    • echo “/ union” > /mnt/my_usb/persistence.conf
    • umount /dev/sda3
  13. I rebooted my computer and loaded into “Live USB Persistence”. I gedited a file on the desktop and rebooted the computer again to see if it worked. And Voila! It saved!

Here is a list of steps I followed for installing the WIFI:

  1. edited etc/apt/sources.list so that only this:
    • deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free appeared
  2. Typed
    • apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
  3. Rebooted computer
  4. Typed:
    • apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r sed ‘s,[^-]-[^-]-,,’) broadcom-sta-dkms
    • modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac
    • modprobe wl
  5. Then WiFI worked!

Hopes this helps for the struggling OSX users! I will try to update this post with all my sources after I find them all!

EDIT: WIFI DOES NOT WORK NOW BECAUSE OF KALI ROLLING. SEE MY OTHER TUTORIAL TO INSTALL WIFI CORRECTLY ON USB PERSISTENCE!

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