i3 Kali Linux Vagrant
Create a Kali virtual machine with the i3 window manager using vagrant and ansible
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.
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.
While knowledge about Ansible and Vagrant might be helpful, the setup is pretty straigt-forward (actually only one single command, if everything goes well)
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.
To generate and start the VM run just run vagrant inside the cloned repository
containing the Vagrantfile:
vagrant upVagrant 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.
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.
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)
Please report any issues not documented here.
You might need to reboot the machine after the first provisioning has finished to use all the settings made automatically.
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:
- Type user/pass
- select "i3 session"
- press login. (Order matters!)
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.shThere 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.
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!