Install Backtrack Applications On Your Ubuntu

Backtrack is one of the most top rated Live Linux Distributions (meaning you can run straight from the CD). Backtrack is focused on penetration testing, and comes pre-packed with many applications to analyse and test your LAN, Wifi, Bluetooth... the list continues.

I have often had a play around with Backtrack, and find the tools and applications very useful. However, with the free storage space on my laptop is becoming ever more limited, and I have no room to install it under a Virtual Machine. The below instructions will show you how you can install all of the Backtrack applications on your current Ubuntu installation.

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repo.offensive-security.com/dist/bt4 binary/

Now to import the Backtrack GPG key and to update the sources:

wget http://repo.offensive-security.com/dist/bt4/binary/public-key && sudo apt-key add public-key && sudo apt-get update

Fantastic! Now we have all the new Backtrack applications ready to install. You can find these applications in your Synaptic Package Manager, under the sections BackTrack - Web (for example). If you are wanting to install all of the new applications quickly, you can run the following command:

links -dump http://repo.offensive-security.com/dist/bt4/binary/ | awk '{print $3}' | grep -i deb | cut -d . -f 1 > backtrack.txt

This command will use the links text browser to grab a complete list of packages and store them into the file backtrack.txt. Each application will then be installed one by one. Be warned! There are 182 applications listed within the text file that you make. This may take some time downloading, all depending on how fast your internet connection is.

GetDeb V2 Beta

For the past three years, GetDeb.net has been the home to newest updates of many of the popular applications available for Ubuntu. In the past, the only real way to obtain any of the software is to go onto their site, download, and install. There was a way to download using apt-get by adding the following line to your sources list:

deb http://ubuntu.org.ua/ getdeb/

If you were luckily enough not to get the classic 404 error message, the downloads were often on the slow side.


GetDeb V2 Beta now offers a fully functional repository that gives users access to the pre-compiled deb packages as soon as they are available on the site. They are very often placed on GetDeb's managed servers before they are placed within their own official repositories!

Gaining access to their repository is made very easy by downloading and installing their GetDeb Package[Right Click, Save As]. Once downloaded, double click to install. If you prefer to do things via the command line, then run the following command:

wget http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb && dpkg -i getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb

If you prefer to add their repository manually, then you will need to add the following line at the bottom of your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu karmic-getdeb apps

Then to add the GPG key:

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -