Installing OpenVAS on Debian 12 Bookworm with Strict Firewall

Linux Distribution and External Repo Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I’m working with the following setup:

OS: Debian 12 (Bookworm) minimal installation.
Firewall: Blocks almost everything except port 873 for feed_community_greenbone (i also could do some changes).
Network: I can access the internet via an HTTP proxy.

I’m fairly new to Linux and trying to install OpenVAS on my Debian system. However, I’m running into an issue where the required packages (e.g., gvm, gsad, openvas) are not found in the default Debian Bookworm repositories.

Here’s the error I get:

E: Unable to locate package gvm

I’ve already tried making some adjustments to the sources.list file, but it hasn’t helped.

My question:
How can I install OpenVAS on a stable Debian 12 (Bookworm) system without completely switching my sources to Kali repositories or destabilizing my current setup?

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

2

Hi @iaa and welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

What happens when you install non-OpenVAS/Greenbone packages from the same repository?

3

If checking Debian -- Package Search Results -- gvm one can see that only Debian unstable is providing the gvm package (among other mandatory ones as well) so it is expected that this package can’t be installed on a Debian 12 / stable.

Info on existing other installation options are publicly available at e.g.:

4

Thanks for your response.

I was wondering, is it possible to download the packages on another machine and then install them on my Debian system? Would that approach work?

Are there other ways to install it?

Thanks again

5

Apologies for the delayed response, and i very appreciate your answer!

I can install and update everything available in the Bookworm (stable) distribution. However, as @cfi mentioned, GVM packages are only accessible from:

- Debian Sid (Unstable)
- Kali Linux

I’m currently trying to install them on Debian Bookworm (Stable).

6

This looks more like a Linux Distrubution specific question and i’m not sure if the community here can answer such questions.

Please keep in mind that Greenbone is not involved in any “packaging” topics (be it Debian, Kali or other Distributions like Fedora), these packages are maintained by package maintainers of the Linux distribution which are usually not active in this forums.

7

Thank you very much!

I was hoping to find someone here who has tried this approach and could share their experience.