Kali NetHunter Rootless: KeX Server Crashes Immediately with XFCE, but Works with LXQt

Environment

• OS: Kali NetHunter Rootless
• Architecture: ARM64 (aarch64)
• Device OS: Android 16 / HyperOS 3
• Desktop environment: XFCE 4.20
• VNC server: TigerVNC / NetHunter KeX
• Alternative desktop tested: LXQt

Problem Description

I experienced a persistent desktop startup problem with Kali NetHunter Rootless when using XFCE through NetHunter KeX.

When running the "kex" command, TigerVNC initially reported that the server had started on display ":1", using port "5901". However, the desktop session terminated almost immediately, and the VNC server shut down.

As a result, VNC Viewer displayed connection errors such as “Connection refused” or “Connection closed unexpectedly.”

The VNC log contained the following messages:

Session startup via '/home/kali/.config/tigervnc/xstartup' exited with status 1!

The X session exited with status 1!

Killing Xtigervnc process ... success!

During troubleshooting, I also encountered GTK/SVG image-loading errors involving "glycin" and "bwrap", along with XFCE components failing to start correctly.

The issue persisted despite troubleshooting the VNC configuration and XFCE startup settings.

Workaround That Worked

I installed the LXQt desktop environment and configured the TigerVNC startup script to launch LXQt using "startlxqt" within a D-Bus session.

After ensuring that the required LXQt packages were installed and the startup script was executable, the graphical desktop started successfully.

The LXQt desktop is now working through NetHunter KeX, whereas the previous XFCE setup repeatedly terminated.

Expected Behaviour

NetHunter KeX should maintain a stable VNC session and successfully launch the XFCE desktop without immediately terminating the server.

Actual Behaviour

The VNC server starts initially, but the XFCE session exits shortly afterwards, causing the server to shut down and VNC Viewer to report connection errors.

Request to the Kali Linux Maintainers

Could you investigate whether this issue is related to XFCE session startup, GTK/SVG image loaders, "glycin"/"bwrap", or package compatibility in Kali NetHunter Rootless on ARM64?

The fact that LXQt works in the same environment may help narrow down the cause.

I can provide additional logs, package versions, and startup configuration details if required.

Thank you for your work on Kali Linux and NetHunter.

So basically I built a sorta pc with spare parts so I didn’t have any OS, so I decided to install Kali Linux. I installed it on an HDD and during the installation I chose to encrypt it. After rebooting and entering wrong passwords a few times when it asked a key, it loaded this weird terminal, and I would like to know if I can recover the password from this pc or if I should use another device to either get the password or straight up reset it and redo the installation process entirely (I did enter a ‘reset’ command, there was a lot of stuff written before)

Heya! im a compsci student who mostly plays around with tools to learn stuff. I've played a bit with a Mint distro on my family's shitty optiplex, and i want to try some hackey tools, mostly johntheripper, hashcat and nmap (i kinda forgot my keepass password n wanna bruteforce it) and i considered dualbooting on my laptop n maybe running a VM on my desktop to actually get my graphics cards cuda cores running.

How noob friendly/complex is Kali? im pretty sure it has a GUI and isnt too hard but any advice or tips are more than welcome!

Hi

Want to say to start, I have literally 0 Linux or WSL experience and I’m not even sure if this is the right place to ask. If it’s not, or someone knows somewhere more suited please let me know.

I am trying to get Kali on WSL2 working for a school project. I can seem to install it fine up until the point of trying to run Win-Kex.

When I try to run it I get a pop up saying it cannot connect to the local host, and it gives a code 10061. I am having this same problem on both a Windows 10 Home Desktop and a Windows 11 Home laptop.

I have spent hours trying to solve the issue looking at stuff online but nothing seems to help. Things I have tried:
- Uninstalling Kali Linux and reinstalling
-Uninstalling WSL2 and reinstalling
- trying vncserver localhost no (says exited early <3 seconds)
- rm and rm rf and rmdir for /tmp/.X11-unix (says either target Is busy or cannot delete because directory)
- remount and umount for .X11-unix
- kill/stop kex

None of the above have worked on either Windows 10 desktop or Windows 11 laptop.
I have tried using sudo and root user with sudo su. No difference. Same when doing it through Kali terminal or through Powershell as an admin.
We have to use Kali via WSL2 so trying another distro or VM is not an option.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Learning wifi pentesting and GPU hash cracking (WPA2, NTLM, MD5). Own gear + isolated home lab only. I went bare metal and now I'm wondering if that was pointless versus just running Kali in a VM.

Rig:
- Kali bare metal on a workstation laptop. LUKS + btrfs snapshots + snapshot entries in the boot menu for recovery.
- Discrete GPU (8 GB) for cracking. 32 GB RAM. Two NVMe SSDs (system + loot).
- Hybrid graphics: iGPU drives the screen, the single discrete GPU does compute. No second card.
- USB wifi adapter for monitor mode + injection (internal card can't do either).
- Targets run as VMs on a separate physical box, so attacker and targets sit on different hardware.

Why I went bare metal:
- USB wifi just works, no passthrough fiddling.
- Direct GPU access. Passthrough to a VM on a single-discrete
-GPU hybrid laptop looked like a nightmare, maybe not even possible.
- Real hardware while learning.

The nagging doubt: a VM gives me free snapshots and portability, and people pass USB wifi through all the time. So maybe bare metal buys me nothing and I'm just making life harder. I'm basically rebuilding the VM's recovery perk with btrfs snapshots + a disk image + a config repo anyway.

So:
- Does bare metal actually add anything here, or would a VM have been just as good (or better)?
- Is GPU passthrough realistic on a single-discrete-GPU hybrid laptop, or am I right that it's a dead end?
- Is USB wifi actually reliable in a VM for monitor mode + injection, or does it get flaky under load?

Roast the setup if it deserves it.

TL;DR: bare-metal Kali on a hybrid-graphics laptop (discrete GPU for cracking, USB wifi for monitor/injection), targets on a separate host. Worth it over a VM, or did I overcomplicate it?

I've been having trouble getting Kali to boot quickly through VirtalBox on anything more than 1 CPU core. Every time I try to scale up the number of cores, I also try to scale the RAM respectively, but every time I have the same issue of Kali taking 15+ minuets trying to get to the login screen, and then even if I get to the login screen the UI is supper laggy to the point it is unusable.

I have an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and have 32 GB of DDR 5 RAM, so I don't think it's a handwear issue. Below are my specs for VirtualBox:

This has been an issue for nearly every distro i have used; on different laptops. Most solutions have suggested turning off "power saving mode" for my WIFI card, done that, but the problem still persist. Anyone help me fix this issue on Kali(kde)

PS: The same WIFI connection works just fine on my windows duo boot on the same machine.

Hey guys!

I have been having an issue that's been annoying for quite some time now. After 4 months of usage I started to have a trackpad issues where a scroll ability would stop working on my trackpad or my trackpad would stop working for couple of seconds.

I tried to google the solution, but only found a command that would restart the kernelmodule (or whatever the thing is called), with the following command sudo modprobe -r i2c_hid_acpi && sudo modprobe i2c_hid_acpi. I have also tried to look for some permanent way of fixing this issue through settings, but I keep getting confused. Also I don't trust claude or chatgpt to solve my issues or share my config files with them, hence I decided to post here.

After some time the glitch would return, and I am frustrated. Appreciate your help in advance!

Hello everyone, I want to study distribution using a more convenient and, imho correct method, namely, reading books (in addition to practice, of course). Has anyone encountered this? Are there more relevant books? If so, could you provide their titles and authors (if there are adaptations of this book in other languages, that would be fantastic). Thanks in advance :3

P.S. I searched for posts on the Internet, but the last one was only from 2018 :(, I think something has changed in 8 years and newer tools have come out and ets. => new books

Long story short: the whyred is a $60 secondhand phone with an unlocked bootloader, and it refuses to retire. I built a kernel that takes LineageOS 18.1 on it and makes it a proper Kali NetHunter device.

What works now:

• HID gadget over USB: the phone pretends to be a keyboard, DuckHunter style keystroke injection, /dev/hidg0
• External WiFi adapters (RTL8812AU class) with monitor mode and packet injection through an OTG cable. The driver module ships in the flashable zip and is signed with the kernel build key, because the kernel keeps CONFIG_MODULE_SIG_FORCE on
• The whole thing is built automatically by GitHub Actions on every push, so anyone can grab a flashable zip for free, or rebuild it from source

The honest limits: the internal WCN3980 WiFi chip can NEVER do monitor mode or injection, that is a firmware limitation, no kernel fixes it. And this targets LOS 18.1-class ROMs (4.4 kernel), not the newer 4.19 based builds.

If you want the gory details: the build needed routing the vDSO32 compile through an ARM32 GCC 4.9 toolchain while the main kernel builds with clang, fixing latent Makefile bugs that only parse when CONFIG_VDSO32 is set, and dealing with module signature enforcement. All documented in the README.

Repo with zips and source: https://github.com/notatallnic189/whyred-nethunter-kernel

Questions welcome. If you still have a whyred in a drawer, this is a fun weekend project.

Here, users who are new to Kali Linux can ask basic questions about it and its functionality and receive assistance regarding potential issues they are facing. Please remember to follow the subreddit rules when asking your questions.

Before posting, make sure you have reviewed Kali's Documentation, as the answer may be well-documented. Additionally, please refer to the following articles to ensure you ask proper and high-quality questions:

• How do I ask a good question
• How to ask questions the smart way
• The XY problem
• Don't ask to ask

Please remember that while AI/LLM models like ChatGPT can be useful, they are not a substitute for proper troubleshooting. When seeking assistance, it's important to refer to the documentation of the tool, program, or OS you're using and to use your preferred search engine for further research.

This megathread will be posted monthly.

It's definitely worth a try.

Would have been better if it worked on a Zero 2W.

The HIDScript implementation is good, it is based on JavaScript and allows even more control and functionality than the usual Ducky Script.

USB Ethernet (RNDIS) works well and configuration settings can be deployed easily via the Web Dashboard.

USB Gadget Mode works perfectly, I can change how the Zero W will appear when connected to my system.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/RoganDawes/P4wnP1_aloa

This is uConsole cyberdeck based on RaspberryPi CM4 running Kali from micro sd card. On top of that, it has additional SDR, LoRa, GPS and extra wifi (monitor and injection) and Bluetooth adapter modules. Cool and portable device!

It took me a whole night to install Kali Linux on a nvidia 3050 ti laptop, manufactured in late 2022. and kali Linux wrote a specific documentation on graphics issues on bare-metal installation(for nvidia).

Hello gang

I just want to voice my opinion about the Kali downloads page at https://www.kali.org/get-kali

I'm not a n00b. I'd rather call myself "advanced user', but still, I frankly find some of the download options confusing. Like, what is this "Purple Kali"? It says something like "Be yourself", well that's not helpful.

Also about the design tricks that changes/jumps sections while scrolling, I honestly don't understand how the designer didn't find that very annoying.

Eventually I picked the link that seemed most relevant to me and closed the site right away, even though I usually spend more time checking the available options in order to pick the best one.

Big Thanks to the Kali Linux team, and much love. I hope you'd take this post as an attempt at positive criticism, as it is.

[FIXED; SEE UPDATE BELOW]

I have a laptop with an iGPU and a dGPU with kali on it (kernel ~ 6.5.0). This is one of those laptops that has a MUX switch which is basically a multiplexer that enables either the iGPU or the dGPU to connect to the display directly at a time. Now, when both GPUs are enabled, the laptop starts on iGPU but immediately tries to switch to dGPU when it boots to kali or windows. Windows having proper configuration allows both GPUs to work, but on kali, it gets stuck on the ACPI Messages screen (the system does boot further but the display doesn't update), I have to reboot and use `nomodeset` in the grub cmdline at boot so that the system falls back to default graphics settings. What I lose:

• MUX capability
• GPU Hardware acceleration (possibly)

The above is of course, a temporary "fix". [Better fix below]

I believe it is a problem with drivers (of course it is), but is there any driver/software that allows me to use the MUX switch on kali?

My current configuration is that I have switched to dGPU only mode in BIOS (iGPU disabled completely, even for windows) which is... okay.... but that still doesn't solve my issue, and I can no longer use my iGPU for power saving even in Windows!

UPDATE:

FIXED!!!

What I did:

1. Install envycontrol (although only just changing its mode to hybrid/nvidia/integrated didn't work)
2. Added i915.enable_guc=0 in /etc/default/grub in string GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

My full GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=

"quiet splash i915.enable_guc=0 nvidia-drm.modeset=1"

What changed for me:

1. Kali now boots with both iGPU and dGPU on
2. Currently envycontrol mode is set to `nvidia` so my system still runs on dGPU
3. I can use iGPU for other stuff
4. I can use both GPUs in Windows now

Here, users who are new to Kali Linux can ask basic questions about it and its functionality and receive assistance regarding potential issues they are facing. Please remember to follow the subreddit rules when asking your questions.

Before posting, make sure you have reviewed Kali's Documentation, as the answer may be well-documented. Additionally, please refer to the following articles to ensure you ask proper and high-quality questions:

• How do I ask a good question
• How to ask questions the smart way
• The XY problem
• Don't ask to ask

Please remember that while AI/LLM models like ChatGPT can be useful, they are not a substitute for proper troubleshooting. When seeking assistance, it's important to refer to the documentation of the tool, program, or OS you're using and to use your preferred search engine for further research.

This megathread will be posted monthly.

Hi everyone. I've been trying to get Kali NetHunter Rootless working on my Android 12 phone for hours and I'm completely stuck.

The installation finishes without any errors and when I run `kex start` it says the TigerVNC server started on `localhost:1` (port 5901). But a few seconds later it exits by itself. `kex status` shows no active sessions and the terminal ends with:

X connection to :1 broken
The Xtigervnc server cleanly exited!

When I open the NetHunter KeX app it always says **Connection refused** on `localhost:5901`.

I've already made sure XFCE is installed, `startxfce4` exists, created the `~/.vnc/xstartup` file, fixed the DNS issue so `apt update` works, but nothing changed. I also noticed `apt upgrade` fails because of a `systemd` error about `/etc/machine-id`, although I'm not sure if that's related.

At this point I don't know if I missed something or if my NetHunter installation is broken. Has anyone seen this before or knows what could be causing the VNC server to exit immediately? Any help would be appreciated.

Just upgraded from MacBook Pro with m2 pro chip to M2 pro with M5 Pro...install Kali on a VM using VMWare Fusion as hypervisor. Hashcat will not run...evidently the open cl was removed from ARM repo

I use my laptop which is my main machine for almost everything. I'm a student pursuing cybersec not a larper ( let me clear that ).

I've installed kali on a different device which I've specifically built for learning and breaking. I was wondering if it's safe to login with Google into the browser as I have my bookmarks and certain accounts there.

Also I would use basic applications such as Discord, Spotify , stremio with my acc nothing more and maybe some development ( optional)

And storing some not so important files as my desktop has more storage.

Does using kali make my device even more vulnerable?

I have an old laptop MSI g65 stealth 8sg where I have a bare metal installation of Kali.

On kernel 6.19.14 with nvidia driver 550.163.01 I could connect two external displays, one using the HDMI port, and another using a usb-c to hdmi dongle.

After full system upgrade and the respective kernel 7.0.12, I had to purge all nvidia packages, and installed the latest nvidia driver 595.84 from nvidia site. Now the hdmi connected monitor is simply "dead" . Any idea on how to solve/diagnose this?

For an easier understanding here is a chronologically correct order of events:

• Kernel 6.19.14 with nvidia driver 550 - both ports working usb-c and hdmi

• then apt full-upgrade

• Kernel 7.0.12 with nvidia driver 550 - none of the ports worked

• purged all nvidia related packages because the driver was installed from debian packages

• installed nvidia driver 595 via .run installer from nvidia (chose the option for proprietary drivers)

• system was not booting, and had no TTY.

• blacklisted nouveau

• system boots and usb-c display works but hdmi does not

Ok, so I've been building lots of linux distros on different platforms for years, and this is the first time I've run into this.
I'm currently trying to put Kali on both a Raspberry Pi 5 and a laptop. Both installs work great.
I am able to get OpenSSH working on both, so accessing the boxes from somewhere else on the network isn't an issue.
However, there are some circumstances under which I would like to RDP into the box, and that is where the problem is.
I install XRDP using apt. I enable and start it using systemctl. However, whenever I try to RDP into it, I get a generic "Cannot connect to this RDP server" message...

When I check systemctl for a status, the only thing I see that is different than other times I have set it up is this line:

I'm used to seeing "service; enabled; preset: enabled", but here it is giving me "preset: disabled", nor am I familiar with the warnings below it".

This only appears to be happening on Kali.

Can anyone offer any advice or guidance?

(OpenSSH is working fine, so please don't tell me to use that instead. I know how to use SSH.)

Thanks in advance.

Im trying to install Kali as a VM on my Linux laptop using qemu and virt-manager. However when the installation is complete the image is scaled up and blurry and if I up the resolution to my monitors one (1080p) it still looks blurry even with scaling turned off and the mouse clicks register far from where the pointer is. Has anyone had this problem?