The ODROID-U2 is a tricky piece of hardware as console output is not a given. Ideally, when purchasing an ODROID-U2, you should also get a USB UART cable, used for serial debugging of the boot process.

By default, the Kali Linux ODROID-U2/U3 image does not contains the kali-linux-default metapackage which is often found in Kali platforms. If you wish to install extra tools please refer to our metapackages page.

Kali does not provide pre-built images for download, but you can still generate one by cloning the Kali-ARM Build-Scripts repository on GitLab, and follow the README.md file’s instructions. The script to use is odroid-u.sh.

Once the build script finishes running, you will have an “img” file in the directory where you ran the script from. At that point, the instructions are the same as if you had downloaded a pre-built image.

The easiest way to generate these images is from within a pre-existing Kali Linux environment.

To install Kali on your ODROID-U2/U3, follow these instructions:

1. Get a fast microSD card with at least 16GB capacity. Class 10 cards are highly recommended.
2. Use the dd utility to image this file to your microSD card (same process as making a Kali USB.

In our example, we assume the storage device is located at /dev/sdX. Do not simply copy these value, change this to the correct drive path.

$ xzcat kali-linux-2024.1-odroid-u-armhf.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progres

This process can take a while, depending on your PC, your microSD card speed, and the size of the Kali Linux image.

Once the dd operation is complete, boot up the ODROID-U2/U3 with the microSD card plugged in.

You should be able to log in to Kali.

To troubleshoot the ODROID boot process, you will need to connect a UART serial cable to the ODROID. Once the cable is connected, you can issue the following command to connect to the console:

$ screen /dev/ttySAC1 115200