i3 Kali Linux Vagrant

Create a Kali virtual machine with the i3 window manager using vagrant and ansible

Why?

I've got used to my i3-based desktop experience and didn't want to miss it when using Kali VMs. Since setting everything up is tedious, I automated my setup.

Disclaimer

While I tried to use sensible defualts in most places, this setup uses my personal dotfiles and is tailored to my taste. You might experience non-default behaviour and settings.

Usage

While knowledge about Ansible and Vagrant might be helpful, the setup is pretty straigt-forward (actually only one single command, if everything goes well)

Prerequisites

You will need to have vagrant installed on your system. Ansible is not required, it will be automatically installed inside the VM. With vagrant installed, just clone this repository.

Run

To generate and start the VM run just run vagrant inside the cloned repository containing the Vagrantfile:

vagrant up

Vagrant will download all necessary files, create a new Virtual Machine and configure everything as defined in the Ansible playbook.yml, this might take a while on the first start.

Login

After vagrant has finished type in type in the default Kali credentials (kali/kali) and select i3 session in the top right menu of the login manager.

Custom settings

There are a few settings that you might want to chang. These are defined at the top of the playbook.yml

Variable	Default	Description
i3_use_gaps	false	Use i3-gaps instead of i3
i3_terminal	xfce4-terminal	Terminal emulator lauched with mod+enter
i3_use_polybar	false	use polybar instead of i3bar
i3_keyboard_layout	'us -variant colemak -option "caps:escape"'	keyboard layout
i3_optional	false	disable optional i3 settings

In particular, I use the colemak keyboard layout. If you prefer something else, just put it in i3_keyboard_layout (e.g. us, without the variant)

Troubleshooting

Please report any issues not documented here.

First start

You might need to reboot the machine after the first provisioning has finished to use all the settings made automatically.

i3 session not starting, even if selected

There is a strange behaviour of the login manager, causing it to launch the default XFCE session instead of i3 sometimes, even if it was selected. To fix this select the session after entering username and password, then click login.

Once again:

1. Type user/pass
2. select "i3 session"
3. press login. (Order matters!)

Shell shows errors

While the zsh plugins should be installed automatically, this sometimes fails. If this happens, run vagrant provision again manually, then install the plugins with this command:

/home/kali/.local/bin/antibody bundle < /home/kali/.config/zsh/zsh_plugins > /home/kali/.zsh_plugins.sh

Documentation

There is also an accompanying post on my personal blog with more information about this project and how it was created. Some of the added comments in the code might also be helpful.

Contributing

If you experience a bug or would like something changed or added, you are more than welcome to open a issue or contribute a pull-request!