Kali 2017.1 Released – Troubleshooting hardware during install

I have a cracking box that was currently Running Win7 pro that I used with hashcat. I wanted to switch to Kali so it’s easier to manage wordlists etc.. and wanted to use a web frontend to manage the cracking. Trying out the new rolling 2017.1 I ran into an issue with usb keyboard/mouse not working when using the Kali graphical installer, on a Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P (rev. 2.x) motherboard with an AMD FX-8320, so I found if I enable iommu in the BIOS settings they work again , but then I had another issue with AMD-VI and other issues during install.

I got to the part where its looking for the CD drive (even though im installing from USB) I saw fixes online where it says to get to shell prompt and type something like:
mount -t vfat /dev/dsb1 /cdrom
or it said to remove the USB and reinsert and try to look for CD but neither worked for me.

Similar to this issue here, http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=120746 , but since Kali wasn’t installed yet I couldn’t obviously edit GRUB. I found out the right fix, apparently this has been an issue for a few years on a different distros, not just Debian.

1. IOMMU should be enabled in the BIOS.

2. Boot from USB on splash screen go down to graphical installer & press tab (or if in UEFI mode press ‘e’) and append iommu=soft to the boot option. The install process should give you no issues now and the keyboard and mouse should work.

3. When you reboot the machine after kali installation completes and reboot , Pressing ‘E’ on the menu item will enter edit mode, where iommu=soft should be added to the end of the line which begins with linux. After this the kali should boot.

4. When finally booted into Kali Open a terminal, and make the change permanent by editing GRUB’s configuration file. Run vi /etc/default/grub and add this to the bottom:
   GRUB_LINUX_CMD_LINE="iommu=soft"
   save the file then update-grub and hit enter
   .
   You should now be able reboot with no issues.