Segmentation fault when updating Kali Linux 2.0 Sana

Most of you already know that Kali Linux 2.0 (Kali Sana) was released yesterday 11-Aug-2015 1444hrs EST. Like everyone else I tried to jump into the bandwagon and tried to install Kali Linux 2.0 Sana and immediately experienced slow update issues. I later ran into Segmentation fault error when trying to do an apt-get update. This post will discuss some recent event that I’ve observed as well as fixing Segmentation fault error in Kali Sana 2.0 when trying to update.

First of all, I think it has to be mentioned that what a fantastic job Kali dev team did. Kali Linux 2.0 Sana looks and feels fantastic and very smooth even in VirtualBox. I am also very happy with the number of torrent seeders and I managed to download all 3 flavors of amd64 Kali Linux 2.0 Sana (kali-linux-2.0-amd64.iso, kali-linux-light-2.0-i386.iso and kali-linux-mini-2.0-amd64.iso) within 20 minutes using torrent. I was getting about 40Mbps download speed  and my upload speed was around 20Mbps (it can go upto 40Mbps). That’s a total of 3.8GB and I decided to contribute back and allowed seeding upto 18GB. (6.09 ratio). Do seed if your ISP allows it.

Anyhow, my point being, Kali is now more popular (I was getting 20Kbps when I downloaded Kali 1.0) and more and more people are using it. Those who managed to download it, I am sure they are as excited as I am but also ran into the same issues that I’ve faced. The main issue being slow apt-get update or a 404 error message when trying to do apt-get update. It’s not only because everyone is trying to download updates but also because of DDoS attack against Kali servers and mirrors. Here’s the Twitter post that I shared yesterday in my Facebook page and Twitter

DDoS attacks constituted about 1/3 of all our traffic today, during our Kali 2.0 release. pic.twitter.com/1dsahyeytR

— muts (@kalilinux) August 11, 2015

That will definitely slow your downloads. We discussed about how to improve download speed by changing mirrors manually before which might be an option if you live in a region where only few mirrors are available. But this also created another problems when you try to install Kali Linux 2.0 Sana. One particular problem is what I’ve experienced: [Correction: Do NOT use repo.kali.org  as it’s not for Sana, I will try to get an update on that.]

Slow updates created another issue when you try to install Kali Linux 2.0 Sana. One particular problem is what I’ve experienced:

Segmentation fault when updating Kali Linux 2.0 Sana

root@kali:~# 
root@kali:~# apt-get update
Segmentation fault
Reading package lists... Done
root@kali:~#

This possibly happened because when I tried to install Kali Linux 2.0 Sana, during auto-update (installation update phase) it timed out due to 404 Errors and I had to cancel the update manually to complete my installation.

Fixing Segmentation fault when updating Kali Linux 2.0 Sana

I found that the easiest way to fix is to open your sources.list file and modify it. When I opened my sources.list file, following is what I found:

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:

Full sources.list below:

#

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 _Sana_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20150811-08:02]/ sana contrib main non-free

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 _Sana_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20150811-08:02]/ sana contrib main non-free

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security/ sana/updates main contrib non-free
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security/ sana/updates main contrib non-free

Well that makes sense, it’s probably better this way rather waiting endlessly for update. You need to modify your sources.list file, remove all existing lines and put the followings instead:

root@kali:~# vi /etc/apt/sources.list
(or)
root@kali:~# leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list

Copy paste the following repositories (remove existing lines). This was taken from official Kali sources.list Repositories list.

# Regular repositories
deb http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free
# Source repositories
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free

Save the file and then run apt-get update as normal.

root@kali:~# apt-get update
Get:1 http://security.kali.org sana/updates InRelease [11.9 kB]
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/contrib Translation-en_AU            
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/contrib Translation-en        
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/main Translation-en_AU        
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/main Translation-en           
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/non-free Translation-en_AU    
Ign http://security.kali.org sana/updates/non-free Translation-en       
100% [Connecting to ftp.cc.uoc.gr (147.52.159.12)]

Conclusion

I will slowly update and add more fixes as I go. It’s definitely tough for me to test everything alone, so please be patient when I can’t respond back to your issues fast enough. Alternatively, I am sure Kali forums would be able to help immensely.

If you’ve found a serious issue that you think makes Kali Linux 2.0 Sana unstable and needs  immediate fix, report it via Kali Bugs pages.

Feel free to comment, report other issues, fixes via comments section. As always, my comments section remains free and anonymous (as much I could). You don’t need to register or validate anything and can use pseudonyms to post comments. Thanks for reading, do share if you feel the community should know about it.

Lastly,

I would like to thank everyone at Kali Dev team again for a fantastic product launch. And if I may be bold enough to say this, “For a Penetration test Linux distro, this can only be compared with iPhone launch.” Well done.