Networking

Older versions of Backtrack would automatically bring up networking and mount drives. This annoyed pentesters, because we don't want such automatic things to happen, especially automounting the primary drive when we boot from a live CD. So, you have to do it manually.

For Ethernet, I type in something like the following:

ifconfig eth0 up
dhclient eth0

For WiFi, I do something like:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed essid "linksys"
dhclient wlan0

There are easier ways of doing this. For example, I can just use the "ifup" thingy:

ifup eth0

Changing the screen resolution

Fixing the screen resolution on Backtrack 4 is a pain. It assumes a laptop with 800x600 or 1024x736 resolution.

I recently installed the VMware version on my desktop, which has multiple monitors. I wanted to full-screen it on one monitor, which is 1280x1024. This is really cool because I can simply mouse over the window to change the focus.

The solution to the problem was to simply exit the desktop back to the command-line, type "fix-vesa", then type "startx" to bring up the desktop again. Voila, it was now 1280x1024. I hit full-screen button on VMware, and everything worked as I wanted it.

I'm not sure what fix-vesa does. I typed "xrandr" to find out what settings had been changed, it appeared to only add an entry for 1280x1024.