If during the installation of Kali Linux 2.0, you have chose to not use any network mirrors, chances are you will be using a pretty basic version of the sources.lst file. For those of you don’t know, sources.lst file determines the software repositories from where you can install packages using “apt”. If you have a minimal version of “sources.lst”, you won’t be able to install many of the packages. For example, if you try to install “htop”, you will get an error saying “package not found”. Follow the instructions below to get a full sources.lst file
First of all, let’s move the previous sources.lst file to backup location and then let’s create a new one with needed repositories.
mv /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list-backup
Now open up a text editor of your choice and open the /etc/apt/sources.list file.
leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list
Now, copy the following content and paste it in the leafpad window, and save it.
The following is the Kali rolling repository. You should be using this unless you have some reasons to use the old repo.
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free
The following is the old repositories. Use this only if you know what you are doing.
deb http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free
That’s it, you should now have access to most of the packages. Once you save the file, do the following command once,
apt-get update
And you’re good to go.