Quick Guide - Deploy Kali with Vagrant

In this guide we are going to spin up a kali virtual machine in a matter of minutes using the power of Vagrant.

Install Vagrant and VirtualBox

If you haven’t already, Vagrant and VirtualBox can easily be installed from the terminal using WinGet.

PS> winget install Oracle.VirtualBox Hashicorp.Vagrant

I find using WinGet more convenient than filling my Downloads folder with installers that I often forget to delete.

Very often, a reboot is required after installing VirtualBox. I recommend you do this now to avoid errors later.

Deploy Kali

In the location of your choice, create a directory to hold the required files. Then navigate to that directory.

PS> mkdir kali
PS> cd kali

After running the next two commands, we’ll have a fresh Kali VM up and running. If you go to make some coffee, the machine will be ready by the time you are back. By default the login is vagrant:vagrant

PS> vagrant init kalilinux/rolling --box-version 2025.1.0
PS> vagrant up

There is a default shared folder in the VM located at /vagrant.
This is the folder where you ran the vagrant init command and it is a useful way to share files between your host and the VM.

Essential Vagrant commands

# Connect to the machine from your VirtualBox host using SSH
PS> vagrant ssh

# Run a command in the VM through SSH
PS> vagrant ssh -c "curl https://wttr.in/california"

# Suspend machine saving its current state
PS> vagrant suspend

# Bring the suspended machine up again and continue where you left off
PS> vagrant resume

# Power off VM
PS> vagrant halt

# Reboot
# If you make changes to the Vagrant file, run this command for them to take effect
# By default, provisioners will not run again, use the `--provision` flag to run the provisioners again
PS> vagrant reload

# No longer need the VM? Destroy it!
PS> vagrant destroy

Vagrantfile

There is so much you can configure within the Vagrantfile. Here is an example with some basic, but useful configurations.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "kalilinux/rolling"
  config.vm.box_version = "2025.1.0"
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.123.10"
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
    v.gui = false
    v.memory = 4096
    v.cpus = 4
  end
end

• config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.123.10": configures a private network so that we can access the VM at the specified IP.
• config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|: is used to configure provider-specific settings, in our case, for VirtualBox.
• v.gui = false: tells VirtualBox to not open the VM’s GUI when booting up.
• v.memory = 4096: specifies the RAM for the machine (4GB).
• v.cpus: number of CPUs.