Hack Lab #1 - Installation of VMs on New Laptop with VirtualBox

So I went out and purchased a new laptop, an HP Pavillion, that I have been using as my travel personal laptop.  I usually carry both my work laptop and a personal laptop when I go on TDY.  I decided to try and setup a Hacking Lab on the new laptop using VirtualBox.  This is a bit of a change for me since I normally have done everything using VMWare. However, I have heard good things about the VirtualBox package, and since it is free I decided to give it a shot.  My version of VMWare Workstation is a bit out of date and I didn't want to spend the $140 or so to update it.  I have had great success with using KVM on Ubuntu (http://linuxweenie.blogspot.com/2016/07/wow-amazing-find-to-convert-vmware-to.html).

I am doing this primarily to get back into preparation for the OSCP labs.  I have been in the labs many times before, and I have taken the OSCP test but have not been completely successful at it.  So, I have added the Kali Linux VM by doing the following:

1. download the Kali Linux VM from https://cdimage.kali.org/kali-2019.1a/kali-linux-2019.1a-amd64.iso
2. launch VirtualBox and install Kali from the iso by following instructions on the screen; make sure to select encrypted drive for extra security (the reason that I did not install from the VirtualBox image)
3. set up a shared directory with the personal laptop and the Kali VM

I did have some issues with having a shared directory between the Kali VM and the laptop until I followed the instructions at https://docs.kali.org/general-use/kali-linux-virtual-box-guest.  I had forgotten that VMWare utilized not only the hypervisor parts but a small set of drivers that were loaded into the VM in order to perform all the functionality, including shared directories with the host.  So the following resolved the issue:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y virtualbox-guest-x11
reboot