Official GenericCloud images

As of recent times (discovered in 2025...) Kali actually is publishing GenericCloud images. They can be downloaded here. These just work - like every other distro. They are a minimal kali-install, with no GUI, and a very limited amount of tools installed. It can be tailored as per the user's needs, following this documentation.

GUI and VNC enabled images

Kali Linux is not maintaining their own desktop-enabled cloud images. Therefore we need to create them manually. To create a Kali image, follow this article. The image is built with tightvncserver enabled for the root user, with a default password ("kaliVNC"). Cloud-init is configured to not disable the root user. This makes it possible to SSH into the root account, and the keypair injected from Openstack will be valid for root login.

This article describes how to build the image on a Linux computer, with KVM/libvirt running locally.

Install Kali on a local virtual machine

1. Download the latest Kali Linux image. Download here
2. Create a new VM on your local Linux computer running KVM/libvirt, and install Kali from the ISO. 20GB disk should be sufficient. Use the qcow2 format. Make sure to select the virtio driver both for disk and NIC. The VM also need internet connectivity.
3. During the installation, use manual partitioning. Create just one partition, with / mounted, and enable the bootable flag. Disable swap.
4. When prompted, create the user "kali" with "kali" as password. The password will be overwritten by cloud-init later.

Modify the image, to make it cloud ready

1. Login to the virtual machine with kali user, and run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. Reboot if necessary.
2. Install cloud-init: apt install cloud-init
   
   1. Add datasource_list: [ OpenStack, ConfigDrive, Ec2 ] to /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99_openstack.cfg
3. Run systemctl enable cloud-init
4. Run systemctl enable cloud-final
5. Edit the file /etc/default/grub, and make sure that the variable GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT contains console=ttyS0 console=tty0 (if there's other content in this variable that's fine. Just add this to the end of the string.
   NOTE: remove quiet
   
   1. Run update-grub

Enable ssh server

1. systemctl enable ssh
2. Ensure that password logon is disabled

Enable vncserver for user "kali", and add it to upstart

1. Install tightvncserver and dbus-x11
2. Run vncserver
   1. Enter the password "kaliVNC" twice
   2. When the command returns, kill the vncserver with vncserver -kill :1

3. Create /usr/local/bin/vncserv and paste this content

   #!/bin/bash PATH="$PATH:/usr/bin" DISPLAY="1" DEPTH="24" GEOMETRY="1280x960" OPTIONS="-depth ${DEPTH} -geometry ${GEOMETRY} :${DISPLAY}" case "$1" in start) /usr/bin/vncserver ${OPTIONS} ;; stop) /usr/bin/vncserver -kill :${DISPLAY} ;; restart) $0 stop $0 start ;; esac exit 0

   
   

4. chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/vncserv

5. Create /lib/systemd/system/vncserv.service and paste this content

   [Unit] Description=VNC Server [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vncserv start ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/vncserv stop ExecReload=/usr/local/bin/vncserv restart User=kali [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

   
   

6. Run systemctl daemon-reload; systemctl enable vncserv

Final steps

1. Shutdown the virtual machine
2. Unmount the ISO file (if still mounted)
3. Run (on your local machine) virt-sysprep -d <vm-name>
4. Convert the qcow2 disk to raw format, and upload it to glance. (howto)