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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0006679Kali LinuxGeneral Bugpublic2020-08-24 20:012023-12-02 15:07
Reporterda667 Assigned Torhertzog  
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
Status assignedResolutionopen 
Product Version2020.3 
Summary0006679: Kali 2020.3 ISO install menu displays erratic behavior on Client Hyper-V
Description

Attempting to install Kali Linux 2020.3 to a Client Hyper-V Virtual machine fails. The virtual machine successfully boots from the ISO, but the Installation options menu is blank. The splash logo background appears, the translucent textbox appears, but no text. Using the arrow keys, hitting enter to see if perhaps the menu is actually populating, but not displaying something fails as well. There are no responses to keyboard input, and no options. Its as though the menu options aren't loading from the CD/DVD for some reason. See the image bug1.png

I've come across a couple of different workarounds that have varying degrees of success in loading the installer menu. I'll briefly describe them here, and go further in-depth on the 'Steps to Reproduce' section:

1). Pausing the VM, then unpausing it occasionally causes the installer menu to re-appear, and allows interaction with the various install menu options, as though nothing was wrong at all. This work-around sometimes doesn't work the first time its done. If its done repeatedly (e.g. 5-6 times), sometimes that will be enough to trigger it and cause the menu to load.

2). un-mounting then re-mounting the 2020.3 installation ISO on the virtual DVD Drive AFTER pausing/unpausing the VM is another technique I attempted that appears to resolve this problem as well and allows users to interact with the installer menu again. Again, sometimes this doesn't work

Steps To Reproduce

  1. Start Hyper-V Manager

  2. Create Virtual Machine with the following settings:
    -Name the VM whatever pleases you
    -Set the VM as a generation 1 VM
    -RAM: 4096MB, uncheck use dynamic memory
    -Network Adapter: doesn't matter what network/virtual switch you use
    -80GB VHD
    -Select the option to boot from a disk image file. select the Kali Linux 2020.3 ISO as the image to boot from

  3. Start the Virtual Machine, then Connect to the Virtual Machine Connection console. The "Kali Linux Installer" screen appears, confirming it was able to boot from the ISO, but there are no options displayed. See bug1.png

Workarounds:
Method 1 -- Pausing/Unpausing the VM:

  1. Pause the virtual machine by clicking the pause button in the virtual machine connection navigation options, then click it again to unpause the VM. see bug2.png for a view of the Virtual Machine Connection navigation menu with the pause button highlighted
  2. After unpausing (click the same button again), the installer menu options appear as normal and can be interacted with. see bug6.png
  3. Sometimes this method does not work. sometimes it will work in combination with method 2 below. Sometimes, repeating this method 5-6 times in a row will cause work. It's not very consistent.

Method 2 -- Unmounting/Remounting the ISO

  1. Follow all the steps laid out in Method 1 -- pause/unpause the kali VM BEFORE PERFORMING THESE STEPS
  2. In the Virtual Machine Connection menu, select the Media option, Then select DVD Drive > Eject kali-linux-22...ller-amd64.iso (see the bug3.png image)
  3. The installer menu options sometimes re-appears after doing this.
  4. Click on the Media option in the Virtual Machine Connection menu again, reselect DVD Drive > Insert Disk. This open the windows file browser. Locate the Kali Linux ISO, on the system, and double click to select it. (see bug4.png and bug5.png)
  5. The installer menu options sometimes re-appear and can be interacted with as normal. (bug6.png)
Additional Information

I can confirm that, after getting the installer menu to actually load, that the installation process works perfectly fine.

To help clarify this issue, I made a small video clip that shows the problem and the work-arounds. I posted it to youtube because the filesize was too large for me to attach to this ticket:

https://youtu.be/iObdQXVMvno

Here are my system specifications:
Client Hyper-V, Windows 10
Version 2004 (Build 19041.450)
32GB physical RAM, 15.4GB available
Intel Core i7 6700
440GB of disk space free out of 465GB

File hash for the ISO matches what is available on the downloads page (https://www.kali.org/downloads/):

PS C:\Users\Tony> Get-FileHash D:\Tony\Downloads\kali-linux-2020.3-installer-amd64.iso -Algorithm SHA256 | Format-List

Algorithm : SHA256
Hash : F3B303AD328F6F7DE6D26AC5FE41A3C10E2DFEDA431A039323FC504ACAB4ACFC
Path : D:\Tony\Downloads\kali-linux-2020.3-installer-amd64.iso

This system has three other virtual machines running on it: A pfSense VM, and a two Ubuntu 20.04.1 virtual machines. They aren't utilizing much in the way of RAM, CPU or disk space, so I don't think this is a resource contention problem, or has anything to do with the other VMs running, frankly. But, in an effort to rule out the other virtual machines and/or resource contention contributing to this problem, I was able to reproduce this problem with the other virtual machines all in the powered off state, to rule out resource contention as a root cause.

I use RDP to manage this laptop and thought that it might have been a UI problem with RDP not functioning and refreshing properly, but was able to reproduce this problem when physically interacting with the laptop as well.

If there's anymore information I can provide to help resolve this, let me know, but at this point I have no idea what the root cause of this problem is.

Attached Files
bug1.png (86,271 bytes)   
bug1.png (86,271 bytes)   
bug2.png (12,199 bytes)   
bug2.png (12,199 bytes)   
bug3.png (6,490 bytes)   
bug3.png (6,490 bytes)   
bug4.png (3,182 bytes)   
bug4.png (3,182 bytes)   
bug5.png (2,482 bytes)   
bug5.png (2,482 bytes)   
bug6.png (74,589 bytes)   
bug6.png (74,589 bytes)   

Activities

da667

da667

2020-08-25 17:45

reporter   ~0013320

In an effort to determine whether or not this issue is specific to 2020.3, I attempted to utilize a 2020.2 ISO, and experienced the exact same problems. I have no idea if the issue is reproducible beyond 2020.2 and 2020.3
steev

steev

2021-06-24 02:04

manager   ~0014825

Would you mind checking 2021.2 and see if the issue still reproduces there?
tienelle

tienelle

2023-12-02 15:07

reporter   ~0018663

I was able to reproduce this in 2023.3, following the instructions in da667's book (which match the reproduction instructions above). After a lot of frustration I found that the installer worked as expected if I created a Generation 2, rather than a Generation 1, Hyper-V VM. Which information might help narrow down the issue.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 New Issue
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug1.png
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug2.png
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug3.png
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug4.png
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug5.png
2020-08-24 20:01 da667 File Added: bug6.png
2020-08-25 17:45 da667 Note Added: 0013320
2020-12-01 10:50 g0tmi1k Severity major => minor
2021-06-24 02:04 steev Note Added: 0014825
2021-06-24 02:04 steev Assigned To => rhertzog
2021-06-24 02:04 steev Status new => assigned
2023-12-02 15:07 tienelle Note Added: 0018663