New Parrot fan : questions on ecrypt HD and more pls

[Alexandre_Pk]

Hi everyone,

I am rather new to Linux and Parrot, but I am already a Parrot fan !

Here is my support post to the community please

I am running Parrot on on a dual-boot Win 10 laptop, having Windows installed on the SSD, and I have install Parrot on the other HD, with partitions for both Windows and Parrot.

The installation went smoothly but I couldn’t get a Swap partition created, don’t know why.

1. Can you please tell how can I have my Parrot disk partition encrypting from installation ? Can I encrypt the current partition I am using or do I have to re-install everything ?

2. About the Swap, my ParrotSec doesn’t have one, but what’s the recommendation please? I have found on the internet how to add one but I would like to figure out how ?

3. The screen display is shaking/instable on occasion. It never happens when I use Windows. Do you have this kind of thing and what to do about it please ?

4. ParrotSec is a great Infosec distribution and I wonder please what are the steps/precautions needed to avoid creating vulnerabilities on my system can you help exploits ?

Many thanks !

Alex

[tissy (Irene Pirrotta)]

Hello!
Answering to your question:

1. Afaik you can’t do post-install full disk encryption, but only home partition. Maybe someone who did this can help you.
2. If you have SSD, no swap is needed. If you have HDD, you have to create swap partition.
3. Does your laptop has an Nvidia/Amd videocard? Can you please show any logs or anything that can show us the issue?
4. The main tip is always to have the system up-to-date, perfoming update/upgrades every time they’re available. The next main tip is: Use sudo instead of Root. Logging in as root directly may expose you to vulns and exploit and many other dangerous things. That’s why many Parrot tools needs sudo for running them.

[Alexandre_Pk]

Many thanks for your response - sorry for late message, but just saw yesterday that my topic got approved and responded.

1. Thanks for your response.
2. Parrot is installed on HDD, so will add swap. cheers.
3. My laptop has a NVIDIA video card ; please be aware though that yesterday and today, I haven’t got any occurence of that screen shaking, so I don’t know what it was, but looks like it doesn’t happen anymore. Will check again. What kind of log could be helpful please ?
4. Many thanks for the advice!

[prx (Proxxie Ermias)]

So, I tried the encryption during installation and upon boot, grub rescue prompt appeared. So, That means I have to reinstall right? If so, will that affect my other Linux installations? I have two for a total of three on the HDD. I barely use one, but the other one is my “daily driver”…but not for long since I have Parrot now. Please advise.

[solo.nepal (LilWizza 永)]

@prx

grub rescue prompt appeared. So, That means I have to reinstall right?

no that doesn’t mean you have to reinstall (Might not)
you can fix that grub error easily
there are many tutorials out there

[wick3dr0se]

You can encrypt your home and swap partition post install. I use parted, fdisk or cfdisk… Regardless of your application you just need to create a linux-swap file system partiton half to equal your RAM typically turn swap on and initialize it. You can access your windows partition by creating a folder like ‘windows10’ in /mnt and mounting it while you’re at it as well

[wick3dr0se]

Check your BIOS boot order make sure Secure Boot and Fast Boot are off. Try to boot via your other Linux installations or look for Parrot itself. If GRUB is an option you aren’t specifically booting into currently then try it. It’s a common issue when multibooting. Grub sucks honestly… Best advice is to only have one efi boot file and use it for all of your operating systems. I created it with Windows 512MB and share it with all 4 of my distros on one 180GB SSD.

[prx (Proxxie Ermias)]

Thanks for the input. I am seeing this after the fact. I reinstalled in a Luks partition. I dove head first into Linux after WIN 10 crashed on me and I was studying for a Cisco cert. Long story short; I formatted and installed a distro that would run GNS3 and have not looked back since. That was last year. I have forgotten about Windows all together. I have since gotten comfortable to partitioning and dual booting various distros, all which funny enough seemed daunting when I was in the Microsoft ecosystem. It also helps that I use Macs a lot, and navigation is somewhat similar

I am getting better at the CLI, just have to get some Linux + material so I can gain some level of mastery on the OS and it’s working.

[prx (Proxxie Ermias)]

I had to do a reinstall. The prompt appears for about two seconds, then proceeds to list all bootable installations. And yes, secure boot is off. I don’t have Windows anymore.

[wick3dr0se]

I’m not familiar with GNS3. I’m an avid Arch Linux user but always had a liking for Debian based distros. It can seem very daunting when you’re taught from the beginning to use only graphical interfaces; In the end it’s WIndow’s terrible management and coding that causes more frustrating experiences than any issue Linux has ever game me. The beautiful part about Linux (If you like to tinker with stuff) is that you learn how to build your DE/WM or pick up some knowledge about the components that work them. Parrot seems to be an amazing OS. This is my 2nd day working with it. I plan to learn as much as I can about pen testing and security. Kali and Parrot both being built on Debian make this a great distro to learn on as well. You should be able to force boot to grub or whichever one you prefer. Use efibootmgr to edit your boot order first, if that doesn’t work just delete the other entries.

[prx (Proxxie Ermias)]

That screenshot was helpful. I just need to figure out what the operators are doing. I heard Arch Linux has a steep installation / learning curve. I also heard lots of good things about it. GNS3 is a network engineer’s best friend as it emulates actual devices, and aids in the creation of simulated topologies, which can later be deployed into production networks. It runs good on Debian so I’m sure it will work with Parrot for me.

[SecParrot]

For Reference:
You can always add full disk encryption post-install, though it is more difficult.

You would have to copy the data from your drive to some external storage, wipe the original drive clean and create an encrypted partition layout.
Then you would have to move the data back into the new layout and edit the respective files to point to the new partitions, from the top of my head /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab.
At last recreate grub/initramfs files via live-USB and everything should work just fine.

I mentioned this because its one of the ways to transfer your OS to ZFS on Root (encrypted),
which i just wrote a small Guide for.
Just replace the clean installation files with your own OS, then continue as described.

[ Tutorial ] Parrot on ZFS

I used the Parrot Project for years, so now i plan to give something back: Guide: Install Parrot OS on ZFS Requirements: 1 USB-Stick (8GB) Internet Connection Burner (Etcher) Steps: 1: Startup 2: Flash the USB 3: Install Parrot 4: Compile ZFS 5: Setup System 6: Finalize Setup 1: Startup: BACKUP YOU PC! If you plan to overwrite your OS, backup first. “We’re off to a good start…” Prepare the live USB: Download your preferred parrot flavor. I chose XFCE for this guide. Open your favorite browser and go to the Parrot OS download page: Download Parrot OS If you can’t find a current xfce image, search here instead: Index of /parrot/iso/ 2: Flash the USB: Download the Balena Etcher Burner, the best burner i know of: balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives Follow its intuitive GUI and flash your USB. “I’m Sec Parrot, and this is my favorite Burner on the Internet!” Expert Option: You can also compile Etcher from source, using the following script. Instruction as to how to install it can be found later, during the zfs compilation. The preferred folder of choice is “/usr/local/src/burner/etcher” It will ask for root password, so READ IT FIRST!!! Note: fails at the time of writing, likely due to upstream bug. should be resolved in a few days. #!/bin/dash sudo apt-get install -y git nodejs python3 jq curl npm libudev-dev || return; sudo rm -r etcher; git clone --recursive --recurse-submodules --single-branch --branch master https://github.com/balena-io/etcher.git || return; cd etcher || return; make electron-develop -j8 CFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" CPPFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" C++FLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" LDFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" || return; npm audit fix || return; make electron-build -j8 CFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" CPPFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" C++FLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" LDFLAGS="-m64 -march=native -mtune=native -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -O3" || return; if firejail --help > /dev/null; then sudo chown root:root /usr/local/src/application/etcher/etcher/node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox || return; fi || return; if firejail --help > /dev/null; then sudo chmod 4755 /usr/local/src/application/etcher/etcher/node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox || return; fi || return; touch etcher || return; echo "#!""/bin/bash" > etcher || return; echo "cd $(pwd)/" >> etcher || return; echo "npm start" >> etcher || return; sudo chmod uo+x etcher || return; sudo cp etcher /usr/local/bin/etcher || return; npm start || return; 3: Install Parrot Once your USB has been flashed, plug it to the PC you want to change and restart the machine. You will likely have to change the boot order, though startpage (google) has enough topics to cover this part. Once your new USB-Menu appears, choose “Installer”. Be aware that it boots into live mode if you are not quick enough, which can cost you a minute. Proceed to setup your system as you like but pause at the partition menu. Enter the manual mode. Here you have to do something unusual: Create a btrfs partition in the free space of your USB. Only create a root partition (no swap, home, or other). If the installer mounted other partitions (preexisting efi partitions etc.) unselect them to avoid changes to your PC. The installer will try its best to stop you, as the installation will be unusable. Ignore and proceed to install. “Don’t you dare continue like this!” The installer will fail at the grub setup (because we did not specify an efi partition). It will offer to go back or continue the installation, which we have to choose (twice). this will open a hidden installation stage menu, including the option to complete the installation without boot-loader. Choose it. The rest of the installation will proceed as normal. That is, it will appear to get stuck at the remove-live-packages step. That’s normal, so do not worry (and take a nap). Once your PC reboots, do not unplug your USB but enter the ram-mode to continue to step 4. 4: Compile ZFS First a quick note: You have the option to either install zfs from packages or compile it from source. Compiling from source has several benefits and should always be preferred (like zstd support). “One does not simply choose zfs packages” There are some bugs with the current image, so first apply the following fixes: Go to Settings Manager → Screensaver and disable the lock-screen (cannot use input field - forces restart) Try to connect to the internet using LAN or WLAN. Then open a terminal and execute sudo parrot-upgrade; (a version of full-upgrade). This can take a while. As it just happened to me: If you see the output ORIGIN DOWN… Try another day? The servers …