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I just setup Metasploitable 2 on VMware Fusion. I downloaded the image from here. I've booted it up and everything and can navigate around but would like to run a apt-get install update and possible be able to install additional packages through using the apt-get function later on if I need too. However, it's not letting me run the command. Here are a few examples of what i'm talking about.

Here i'm running..

apt-get install git

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Here i'm trying to do a simple update. Maybe there isn't anything to update but I would think there would be something..

apt-get update

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Here i'm just trying to install a simple command called tree...

apt-get install tree

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Don't understand what is going on. I do have a connection because i can ping google.com for instance. I've looked up documentation on installing Metasploitable 2 but everything seems outdated and as a result several steps pertaining to those documents just don't work since their outdated. Is there any documentation out there that someone could point me too to finish setting up this image. All i want to do is use it as a target so probably don't need to do much else. However, i'm new to VMware and especially Metasploitable 2 so if anyone has any suggestions on additional steps I need to complete in configuring any settings please let me know.

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  • I'd guess they use a much smaller subset of packages or you're getting the package name wrong. Try using apt-cache search <package> first? Considering its intentionally left vulnerable, I'd guess they don't really expect you to update or install new software. In short. I suspect this is entirely by design. Use a real distro for actual work ;p
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 31, 2014 at 3:51
  • yea i'm just using it as a target. i'm running Kali for my attacker. You wouldn't perhaps know how I could quit out of a command. I issued the command shutdown -h now. All it does is just sit there. I try to control c or control d but nothin
    – Shane Yost
    Jul 31, 2014 at 3:58
  • i've never had this trouble before using shutdown -h but just doesn't seem to work properly. It just sit there and acts like it's stuck. so aggravating.
    – Shane Yost
    Jul 31, 2014 at 3:59
  • Nevermind according the makers of Metasploitable2 there are no updates and it's not intended to be. So that pretty much solved my questions.
    – Shane Yost
    Jul 31, 2014 at 4:35
  • Let me post that as an answer then ;)
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 31, 2014 at 5:12

1 Answer 1

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Metasploitable2 is specifically designed to be a vulnerable distribution that's been forked off Ubuntu. While your usual package management commands exist, there's no real point in patching security holes (as you would normally do), or even making available a full set of packages.

If you absolutely must get packages, I'd recommend working out what version of ubuntu they use as a base and either downloading the packages manually, or adding the repos, but using pinning to prevent the system from auto-updating like so.

In short, this is entirely by design

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  • I couldn't install traceroute on it, is it for the same reason you mentioned above?
    – Alaa
    Feb 1, 2018 at 8:10
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    bascially the whole point of the distro is to have a known bad platform to learn on. Have a look at the comments of the question. I wouldn't be surprised if they just left the package lists empty.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Feb 1, 2018 at 8:22

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