EMBA fails to install in WSL environment

[m-1-k-3]

Thanks to https://twitter.com/jaylagorio we have tried to get EMBA running under WSL. There are some pitfalls that I want to show here. The following documentation is a quick howto to get EMBA up and running. In the near future I probably will integrate the relevant stuff into the installer.

Open Power Shell on your Windows host (with admin privs):

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Do a reboot of your Windows host

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

Do a reboot of your Windows host

Download and install the WSL2 Linux Kernel from here: https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel

Open PowerShell as administrator and run:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --set-default-version 2

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --install -d ubuntu

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --list --verbose

As I have used the default ubuntu image I got the 20.04 LTS version. This version is not officially supported from EMBA. Let's give it a try:

m1k3@md3znjec:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"

First of all, I was running into issues with my DNS settings. So, I disabled the auto update and set it fixed to 8.8.8.8:

m1k3@md3znjec:~$ sudo vim /etc/wsl.conf
m1k3@md3znjec:~$ cat /etc/wsl.conf
# [network]
# generateResolvConf = false

m1k3@md3znjec:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# This file was automatically generated by WSL. To stop automatic generation of this file, add the following entry to /etc/wsl.conf:
# [network]
# generateResolvConf = false
nameserver 8.8.8.8

After changing the DNS settings it was possible to resolve hostnames. Now, we need to update docker-compose. Another EMBA user (https://github.com/erd0spy) has already shown how this will work: #247

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.28.5/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

After these preparation steps we are mostly ready to go:

m1k3@md3znjec:~$ git clone https://github.com/e-m-b-a/emba.git

m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo apt-get update

As we will run into issues with docker we install it now manually:

m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo apt-get install docker.io

Start the docker daemon in the background:

m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo dockerd &

Now we can give the installatino process a first try:

m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo ./installer.sh -d

EMBA installs the initial stuff on the host and downloads the EMBA docker container

After a while the installer will fail during the setup of mongod:

This means that we already have most of the relevant installation process finished. Let's do the last steps manually:

m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo sed -i 's/bindIp\:\ 127.0.0.1/bindIp\:\ 172.36.0.1/g' /etc/mongod.conf
[sudo] password for m1k3:
m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf &
[2] 11498
m1k3@md3znjec:~/emba$ sudo /etc/init.d/redis-server start
Starting redis-server: redis-server.

With this in place we should be able to manually update the cve database:

./external/cve-search/sbin/db_mgmt_cpe_dictionary.py -p
./external/cve-search/sbin/db_mgmt_json.py -p
./external/cve-search/sbin/db_updater.py -f

After all these steps EMBA should run as expected in your WSL Ubuntu environment.

I hope that I have noted all required steps. Please comment if something is not working as expected. I will do further tests with our supported Ubuntu and Kali Linux.

Thanks a lot to https://twitter.com/jaylagorio for an evening of testing, verifying and improving EMBA :)

[m-1-k-3]

Ubuntu 22.04 will also work in WSL with some adjustments:

Download and basic install:

curl.exe -L -o ubuntu-2204.appx https://aka.ms/wslubuntu2204

wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.1.1-1ubuntu2.1~18.04.20_amd64.deb
wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl1.1_1.1.1-1ubuntu2.1~18.04.20_amd64.deb

install the packages with dpkg -i

sudo apt install lsb-release ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce
sudo dockerd &

Afterwards you can use the installer and this will fail again at the mongod installation

[m-1-k-3]

Check also https://github.com/e-m-b-a/emba/wiki/Experimental-WSL-support