Metasploit Framework console and commands

Gathering knowledge of the architecture of Metasploit, let us now run Metasploit to get hands-on knowledge of the commands and different modules. To start Metasploit, we first need to establish a database connection so that everything we do can be logged into the database. However, usage of databases also speeds up Metasploit's load time by making use of caches and indexes for all modules. Therefore, let us start the postgresql service by typing in the following command at the Terminal:

root@beast:~# service postgresql start

Now, to initialize Metasploit's database, let us initialize msfdb as shown in the following screenshot:

It is clearly visible in the preceding screenshot that we have successfully created the initial database schema for Metasploit. Let us now start the Metasploit database using the following command:

root@beast:~# msfdb start

We are now ready to launch Metasploit. Let us issue msfconsole in the Terminal to start Metasploit, as shown in the following screenshot:

Welcome to the Metasploit console. Let us run the help command to see what other commands are available to us:

The commands in the preceding screenshot are core Metasploit commands which are used to set/get variables, load plugins, route traffic, unset variables, print version, find the history of commands issued, and much more. These commands are pretty general. Let's see the module-based commands, as follows:

Everything related to a particular module in Metasploit comes under the module controls section of the Help menu. Using the preceding commands, we can select a particular module, load modules from a particular path, get information about a module, show core and advanced options related to a module, and even can edit a module inline. Let us learn some basic commands in Metasploit and familiarize ourselves with the syntax and semantics of these commands: