Kali VM "apt-get" Issues Resolution

[jwblant]

I'm not sure how many others are having this problem but after a fresh install of my Kali iso that I've used several other places, I started noticing some strange behaviors. The biggest thing was that my cursor didn't show up in the VNC window, which after researching it appears to be due to my Laptop's touch screen. I decided to just try RDP instead. But every package I tried to install kept returning the "no package found" error in the terminal. 

 

I thought was might have been due to using a VNC client to connect, but I tried to install a few other random packages with no luck. Apt updates and upgrades would complete immediately without doing anything, which was very weird. Eventually, I realized that my /etc/apt/sources.list contained ONLY the sources on the original ISO and which had all been immediately been disabled upon install. I quickly added the line "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free" and I was back in business!

 

Apparently, this is just the way Debian works, but I had never noticed it before. I wanted to let others who may run into a similar problem what fixed it for me in hopes of saving someone a headache someday!