As an alternative to downloading the virtual appliance, you can run the REMnux installation script on an existing Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit system. This allows you to install REMnux on a physical host or a virtual machine. You can use this method to add REMnux software and settings to a brand new system or to the host you’ve been using for a while. SIFT Workstation users can utilize this approach to combine SIFT and REMnux into a single system.

If you’d like to build a REMnux system from scratch, use the Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit minimal ISO as the starting point. If building a virtual machine, allocate at least 1GB of RAM and 25GB disk (more recommended). When going through the Ubuntu installer, consider creating the user named “remnux” with the password “malware”, though any credentials will work. For step-by-step instructions, see the screenshots of the Ubuntu installation steps.

Once you’ve logged into the newly-built or existing system compatible with REMnux, run the following command to install the REMnux distro:

wget --quiet -O - https://remnux.org/get-remnux.sh | sudo bash
This installation script will configure your system and download and install the necessary software without asking you any questions. It requires Internet access to accomplish this. The installer will run for approximately 45 minutes, depending on the strength of your system and the speed of your Internet connection.

A handful of people running the installation script within virtual machines noticed that the antivirus tool installed on their underlying host flagged some REMnux packages as malicious and blocked their download. This is a false alarm. However, if you encounter this, you might need to disable the host’s anivirus tool while running the script or whitelist the offending files or URLs to avoid getting them blocked.