43 BackTrack Basics Once you have BackTrack up and running, it’s time to learn about BackTrack basics. By the time
you are reading this book, BackTrack would have been upgraded to version 6 or 7, and you might
be wondering if the techniques discussed work only for BackTrack 5. If so, then you are wrong.
Starting from BackTrack 1 all the way to BackTrack 5, the only thing that changed were the
tools. Outdated tools are removed and new tools are added, but the structure and fundamentals
stay the same.
One of the common problems I see with beginners is that they tend to use the KDE menu a
lot. I suggest you stay away from the KDE menu and try to use the command line before jumping
to the KDE menu. I want you to familiarize yourself with BackTrack’s environment as it will be
discussed in many of the upcoming chapters, especially in the later chapters of this book.
Taking you back to BackTrack, the
/pentest
directory is by far the most important direc-
tory present in BackTrack as it has all the penetration testing tools. To access the pentest directory
of BackTrack, open up your shell and type “cd/pentest” and then type “ls”. “ls” will get you into
all the subdirectories present in the pentest directory.
Changing the Default Screen Resolution The default size of the BackTrack 5 screen is 800 by 600, which is very small and is not recom-
mended. If you want to change your BackTrack 5 (KDE) default screen size, then just follow these
steps:
Step 1 —Go to Start
→
Settings
→
System Settings
Step 2 —Then from the hardware section click on “Display and Monitor”
44 ◾
Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide Step 3 —Next choose your preferred size and click “Ok”. A dialog box will now appear asking
you to confirm the changes. Just click “Accept Configuration” and you are done.
