gtk not found ... Nessus install

rickh · 06-05-2005, 04:45 PM

During the complile phase installing Nessus on Debian. I get this error:
configure: warning: **** gtk not found

If I let the compile / install finish, the daemon starts fine, but when I try to start the client. it fails with 'Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display'

Gtk is, of course, installed, and the installation on my Fedora box had no such problem. Any suggestions?

Ephracis · 06-05-2005, 06:32 PM

Check the README for Nessus, maybe your version of gtk is old. After you install any lib you may have to do ldconfig so that Nessus will find the new lib.

rickh · 06-05-2005, 08:30 PM

My GTK is new, I added /usr/local/lib to ld.so.conf, I ran ldconfig ... same problem ... any other suggestions

Ephracis · 06-06-2005, 05:03 AM

By new, what version? My only other solution would be if you install Nessus from source instead, if your configure still complains you could always take a look at config.log, that will tell you where it looked for gtk, what it found and what the problem is. I am not sure how to check those things with apt. :/

Dead Parrot · 06-06-2005, 05:40 AM

You aren't by any chance trying to run the nessus client as root? This could produce the kind of error message you get. I've run nessus only a couple of times to check the security of my desktop setup (I use tiger for daily security monitoring) but, AFAIK, the nessus client is supposed to be run as normal user. Here's the contents of /usr/share/doc/nessus/README.Debian :

Quote:

Nessus in Debian
+--------------+

How to use Nessus?

* Set up the server certificate with `nessus-mkcert'.

* Set up a user with `nessus-adduser'.

* Set up the client certificate with `nessus-mkcert-client'.

* Run `nessusd -D' in order to start the daemon.

* Change back from root to normal user, run X and start `nessus'
(or select it from the menu, it's in Apps/System submenu).
Tell the client to connect to localhost.
It will ask you for a username and password. Enter the user/password
you set up with nessus-adduser, and off you go.

Nessus has a test for its daemon running, because it is a potential security
problem, so it wouldn't seem wise to automatically start it on boot-up.

An init script for nessusd is provided in the file the.init.d.script,
courtesy of Luca Andreucci <andrew@andrew.org> and others.

Remember to `killall nessusd' (as root) after you finish with `nessus'.

Debian defaults
---------------

Before you change Debian's nessusd.conf file consider this:

0.- signature checks (nasl_no_signature_check) only apply to "trusted"
plugins, and those are the plugins that do remote local security checks
(through SSH connections that need to be preconfigured by the nessus admin)

1.- you shouldn't give access to the Nessus daemon to users you don't trust,
or allow them to upload plugins. Giving access to users is equivalent to
allowing them to launch remote attacks to any system your nessus server is
connected to. If you have local security checks it's equivalente to granting
them SSH access to the remote hosts you have configured (if any)

2.- The default configuration does _not_ allow plugin uploads

3.- The nessus-plugins package does _not_ automatically run
nessus-update-plugins, you have to do this manually. Review the plugins
retrieved by this before you run your Nessus server

4- you should review the plugins you download using nessus-update-plugins
_always_. Nessus-update-plugins (in releases prior to 2.2.2) does not check
the GPG signature of the files retrieved, just the MD5 sum. So a man in
the middle attack could provide you with forged plugins. In this event,
even if you had nasl_no_signature_check set to 'no' the nessus server
would still load these rogue plugins _if_ they are not local security checks.

5- Be careful when setting up remote SSH access so that Nessus can run
local security checks since you are (effectively) given console access
to remote servers. Always use a non-root account for this.

-------------------------------
Mon, 24 Jan 2005 16:55:23 +0100
Javier Fernandez-Sanguino

The Debian binary packages for nessus are "nessus", "nessus-plugins", and "nessusd" -- although the startup message for the nessus daemon complains that this version doesn't include all the available plugins. (I guess this is the reason why you want to compile nessus from source?)