Do you like to overcomplicate things? Do you like to automate something that you can do quicker manually?
If you answer ‘Yes’ to these questions then this post is for you.
I have Kali Linux installed on my laptop though WSL. It’s great and I use it quite frequently but I was looking for a way to automate the update of Kali. Rather than using the normal way, I decided to look at how Power Automate works.
All the cool kids are using Power Automate (Apparently) and I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and see what I can do with it.
To work out how to use Power Automate, I went to the source of truth “YouTube” and looked at a few videos. It seems pretty straight forward so I thought about what I could do to test Power Automate.
“I know” lets use Power Automate to update Kali on my laptop. It seems simple enough and if I automate it, I can save myself precious seconds to spend on other activities.
So here is what I did.
I downloaded Power Automate for Desktop from my Microsoft 365 user portal. I installed power Automate and signed in and I am presented with a few different ways to go about achieving my goal of saving 2 to 3 seconds of my life automating a task.
The first approach was to record the steps to get a feel of what was happening. Once I had that done, I looked for ways to improve this process and this is what I ended up with.
Follow along if you have nothing better do do with your life and want to waste it reading how to automate the update process.
Step 1 – Use UI Automation and select “Use Desktop” to open the Windows Terminal
Step 2 – Wait 2 Seconds so it can open the windows terminal.
Step 3 – Send text to the foreground window to launch in to Kali’s console screen.
Step 4 – Send a Return to the console window.
Step 5 – Wait 5 seconds so everything can load properly.
Step 6 – Get ready for some action and send the update and upgrade command to the console. What’s fun about this is that you can just type (Space) to put in a space you have to use the “Insert Special Keys” and choose Space.
Step 7 – Lets wait for 2 more seconds. That is 9 seconds now we have been waiting.
Step 8 – Let’s hit “Return” to get this party started.
Step 9 – More waiting. But only for 2 seconds.
Step 10 – Got to put the password in. At least you can encrypt the password so those nasty hackers cant read your password.
Step 11 – Oh joy, more waiting.
Step 12 – Ok, now we are cooking with gas.
There you have it. 12 steps to automation bliss.
So, why would you want to use this. Why not just do this manually. it is faster. This is very true but there are two main reasons for doing this.
The first is that Power Automate in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing can do some amazing things. The possibilities are endless and while updating kali is not a great use case, I am sure that there are some great things that can be done to make peoples lives easier.
The second reason is that I learn by doing and by doing stupid things like this, it gives me a better understanding of what I can use Power Automate for. I don’t think I will ever become an expert with Power Automate but by doing little projects like this I can learn and get better.
That’s the whole point. By continuing to learn the better we will become.
Stay curious and stay safe.
imp0st3r