Installing Kali community template

Hi everyone
I am trying to continue to add to my knowledge and skill with qubes and have downloaded the Kali template ( [qubes-template-kali-4.0.6-202205110149.noarch.rpm].

I have looked for a guide as to how to get this installed and there doesn’t appear to be much that I can follow. But first things first. I have downloaded the zip folder into my ‘personal’ vm which is the one that is installed in qubes by default. I realise that I have to get the zip from the ‘personal’ vm to dom0 by use of

qvm-run -p QUBE 'cat PATH_TO_DOWNLOADED_TEMPLATE ’ > TEMPLATE_PACKAGE_NAME

Now my skills are exposed. I do not know how write

cat PATH_TO_DOWNLOADED_TEMPLATE

That is how to correctly write to where the zip folder is located so it can be moved to dom0.

I know that this is pretty basic stuff but for the qubes environment it has me beaten. If someone can help me I can then blunder along trying to get this working.

Thanks for any help.

Assuming you downloaded the RPM (the packaged template) to your Downloads folder, it should be something like:

qvm-run --pass-io personal 'cat /home/user/Downloads/qubes-template-kali-4.0.6-202205110149.noarch.rpm' > qubes-template-kali-4.0.6-202205110149.noarch.rpm

Please replace user with your username if appropriate.

Thanks for that prompt reply. Yes, it is my downloads folder, sorry for that omission.

I’ll give it a go.

Brilliant! I now have the template in dom0. Thank you for that. Now I’ll trundle on and see how things go. Its great to make some progress in an area that I’ve avoided.

Thanks so much for the help. I may be back at some point in this template journey!

There’s a big chance you’ll come across several surprises on this journey.
Just ask if something goes wrong and make sure to carefully read @unman’s guide on installing the template they provided. It contains a solution to a specific problem I’m thinking about right now.

I find that information or guides are fractured (for me at least) for this. I know that @unman has been tireless in his work. I haven’t come across a guide as such. Does someone have a link handy that I wrestle along with?

Please use @unman’s instruction from here: https://qubes.3isec.org/Templates_4.1/

Notice the ‘Installing large templates’ section, it’s important.

And why don’t you install it directly from community-testing repository as any other template?

I’m not familiar with the community-testing repo? That way sounds miles easier. I’ll see if I can find it and give it a go. I’m hoping to give this some time this afternoon.

The template there is built on bullseye, and is over 18 months old.
Kali is based off Debian testing, so you will have to perform both a
full dist upgrade and a major update - many users find this will bork
their template.
As with Arch, I try to provide more up to date templates and packages
when the community repos are failing users.

Thanks for letting me know. I think that for the moment I’ll wait. It’s a bit of a stretch at the moment for me I think.