Installing Ghidra On Linux

Just a quick rundown of how I installed Ghidra on linux machine (Kubuntu in my case) and added it to PATH so we can run ghidra directly from terminal.

☕ Step 1: Install OpenJDK

Ghidra requires Java and we should install the latest version. At the time of this post, the latest version is v21.

1. You can install OpenJDK with:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt-get install openjdk-21-jdk
   

2. Verify that it’s installed:

   java - version
   # OUTPUT (Something similar)
   openjdk version "21.0.6" 2025-01-21
   openJDK Runtime Environment (build 21.0.6+7-Ubuntu-124.04.1)
   OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0.6+7-Ubuntu-124.04.1, mixed mode, sharing)
   

🧩 Step 2: Download Ghidra

1. Head to the official Ghidra site: 👉 https://ghidra-sre.org

2. Download the latest zip archive. As of this post, latest is 11.3.1

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📂 Step 3: Extract to /opt/

1. Once downloaded, I extracted the zip file to /opt/ (system-wide install location):

   # enter downloads directory
   cd ~/Downloads
   # extract ghidra to /opt/
   sudo unzip ghidra_11.3.1_PUBLIC_20250219.zip -d /opt/
   

🛠 Step 4: Add ghidraRun to PATH

To make ghidraRun accessible from anywhere, we need to edit our .bashrc (or .zshrc if you’re using that):

1. Open ~/.bashrc in your favorite text editor

   # open ~/.bashrc in text editor
   nano ~/.bashrc
   

2. Add the following line at the end:

   # add this to end of ~/.bashrc file
   export PATH=$PATH:/opt/ghidra_11.3.1_PUBLIC
   

3. Save changes with: ctrl-o -> Enter -> ctrl-x (if using nano)

🚀 Step 5: Launch Ghidra

Now we can start ghidra from any terminal:

#command to start ghidra
ghidraRun