NST 18 Getting Started
Overview
SVN: 4509
This page provides a overview of getting started with the Network Security Toolkit using the NST 18 release (nst-18-4509.i686.iso). This page dicusses:
- Where to download the ISO image from.
- Different methods to live boot from the ISO image.
- Installing to hard disk.
- Initial setting of the passwords (which enables the sshd and httpd services).
- Accessing the NST Web User Interface (WUI).
Download ISO Image
You should be able to download the nst-18-4509.i686.iso image from the NST area at SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/nst/files/NST/).
Live Boot The ISO Image
Once you have downloaded the ISO image, there are several ways to live boot from it.
Using USB Flash Drive
The NST distribution is based off of Fedora. Because of this you can use a variety of methods to install the NST ISO image onto a USB flash drive.
The following sections provide a quick reference for some common methods for transferring the ISO image to a USB flash drive. What is described below is just the tip of the iceberg. For full details, refer to the man pages for the various utilities used and visit the "How to create and use Live USB" page on the Fedora wiki.
Using liveusb-creator
If you are more comfortable with graphical applications, you can use the liveusb-creator tool. Look for Fedora LiveUSB Creator under the Activities menu. This tool offers a subset of the features provided by the livecd-iso-to-disk command line utility, but is recommended for beginners (or people that don't have time to read and can live with limitations).
Using livecd-iso-to-disk
Assuming you have booted from a live NST or Fedora system, you should be able to use the livecd-iso-to-disk utility to install to initialize a USB flash drive in the following manner:
rpm -q livecd-tools || yum install livecd-tools livecd-iso-to-disk --noverify /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sdx1
You will need to change /dev/sdx1 shown above to the partition of your USB flash drive you want initialized. Add the --format and --reset-mbr options if you need to clear/initialize your USB flash drive to a good working state.
Using dd
It is also possible to use the dd command to copy the contents of the ISO image to a USB flash drive having a capacity of 2GB (or more). The following demonstrates how to do this from the command line on a Mac. The diskutil utility was used prior to invoking the dd command determine the device entry for the USB flash drive and to unmount any active partitions.
taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *512.1 GB disk0 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 511.8 GB disk0s2 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk1 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1 2: Apple_HFS TIMEMAC 749.8 GB disk1s2 /dev/disk3 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *8.0 GB disk3 1: Windows_FAT_32 tldboot 128.0 MB disk3s1 2: Linux 7.9 GB disk3s2 taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3 Unmount of all volumes on disk3 was successful taco-e:tlp pkb$ sudo dd if=/Volumes/public/vm/iso/nst-18-4509.i686.iso of=/dev/disk3 bs=$((8*1024*1024)) 220+1 records in 220+1 records out 1847590912 bytes transferred in 2957.797273 secs (624651 bytes/sec) taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil eject /dev/disk3 Disk /dev/disk3 ejected taco-e:tlp pkb$
Here are some things to be aware of when using the dd method:
- The entire USB flash drive is used. Hence, if you use a 16GB flash drive, you won't be able to store information on any of the remaining disk space.
- The systems which you want to boot from need to support booting from USB ISO images in addition to or instead of booting from USB FAT images. This may lead to better or worse compatibility.
- You will not have access to all of the fancy features available when using the Live USB tools (separate writable home partition, overlay, etc).
Using a Virtual Machine
If you have a virtual environment (VMware, VirtualBox, etc) installed on your system, you should be able to quickly boot directly from the ISO image. The minimum recommended settings for a virtual machine boot are:
- 1 GB of RAM
- 1 CPU
- 20 GB of disk space (if you want to install NST to a virtual hard disk).
After allocating your virtual machine:
- Configure your virtual machine to boot from the NST ISO image.
- Boot from the NST ISO image.
- Log in and install the NST system to your virtual disk (there is a icon on the desktop).
- Shutdown your virtual machine.
- Disconnect the NST ISO image from your virtual machine.
- Boot from the NST hard disk installation.
- Log in.
- Use the icon on the desktop to set the initial system passwords (this will also enable the sshd and httpd services).
- Install the virtual drivers according to your virtual environment and reboot to make sure they load cleanly (unless you are running under VMware).
If at some point in time you decide to update your kernel, you will need/want to update your virtual drivers as well.
Using DVD
If your machine is unable to boot from a USB Flash drive, you can try burning the NST ISO image to DVD and try booting from the DVD. Be aware that booting from DVD media tends to be much slower than booting from a USB flash drive.
As a side note, if you are not familiar with burning ISO images to DVD, try one of the following searches (or substitute the name of your operating system):
Once you have successfully burned the DVD you should be able to boot from it.
If you can't boot from it, most likely:
- You got a bad burn. We have seen times where a DVD burned on one system does not seem to work with a DVD drive of another system.
- You have a bad download. Verify the check sum value of the ISO image you downloaded with what is posted at the web site you downloaded it from.
