Installing Nessus on Ubuntu

Installing and using Nessus on a Debian/Ubuntu based system is as simple as following these steps:

sudo apt-get install nessusd nessus nessus-plugins

During the installation, it will ask you to create a Certificate, accept defaults, change location, state, etc if you like.

sudo update-rc.d nessusd defualts
/etc/init.d/nessusd start
sudo nessus-adduser

Now, when you come to "policy for this user" read the man page for nessus-adduser. Since I wanted to be able to scan any host (in other words create a superuser), I used the 'default accept' rule. Just type 'default accept' followed by a newline and a Ctrl-d.

/etc/init.d/nessud restart

Now you can launch Nessus from the command prompt by typing 'nessus'. Use the previously create login name and password, and enable SSL.