BackTrack 5

BackTrack is a Linux distribution that is based on Ubuntu, designed for hackers and/or security professionals, and loaded with the best Free Software and Open Source penetration testing applications available.

If you are looking for the best information gathering, vulnerability assessment, exploitation, privilege escalation, reverse engineering, RFID, stress testing, forensic and anti-forensic applications, you will find it on BackTrack. It is a hackers delight. If you are new to this distribution, you might want to read BackTrack 5 Revolution 2 screen shots. The screen shots there shows some of the category of applications available on BackTrack.

The latest edition is BackTrack 5, code-named Revolution, and we are at the second iteration release – BackTrack 5 R2. It is available as an installable Live DVD ISO image for both 32- and 64-bit architectures, each weighing in at about 2.8 GB. There is a separate installation image for the KDE and GNOME desktop environments. While you can install it on any computer, I think the best practice is to install it on an external, USB hard drive. Doing that, gives you a pentest distribution on the go plus all the extra storage you might need.

You may also opt to install it on a USB stick (a flash drive), but if you choose to go that route, be sure to have one with a capacity of more than 18 GB. Why? A default installation of BackTrack 5 R2 takes up just a little bit more than 18 GB of disk space. It is huge.

This tutorial shows how to install it on an external hard drive, using a 32-bit installation image. You may download it fromhere. Burn it to a DVD, place the DVD in your computer’s optical drive and reboot. Boot into the Live desktop and click on the Install BackTrack icon on the desktop. When the installer launches, click through the first few steps until you get to the one shown below, It is the fourth of eight steps of the installation process.

Since you are attempting to install it on an external hard drive, it means the computer will have at least one internal hard drive. To have the installer auto-partition the external drive, select the second option at this step of the installation process, then select the external drive from the dropdown menu below it. Just be sure that the drive you select is the external drive. Hint: It will not be sda because that is the first internal hard drive. And if the computer has two internal hard drives, it will not be sdb. That, is the second internal drive. If you are new to this, you might want to read guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux.