Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. Unfortunately, setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft's VirtualPC can be extremely difficult. The ievms scripts aim to facilitate that process using VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.
Thanks to Greg "xdissent" Thornton (https://github.com/xdissent) for original sources.
- VirtualBox (http://virtualbox.org)
- Axel OR Curl OR Wget
- p7zip-rar OR wine OR unrar (download unrar locally) for rar
- p7zip OR cabextract OR wine for IE6 cab
- mkisofs (Linux) OR hdiutil (OS X) for IE6 drivers
- Patience
Install VirtualBox.
Download ievms.sh and run:
Install IE versions 6, 7, 8 and 9.
bash ievms.sh
Install specific IE versions (IE7 and IE9 only for example):
IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9" bash ievms.sh
Install on specific location (disk space issues):
INSTALL_PATH="/media/DiscHasSpace/ievms" bash ievms.sh
Launch Virtual Box.
Choose ievms image from Virtual Box.
Install VirtualBox Guest Additions (pre-mounted as CD image in the VM).
IE6 only - Install network adapter drivers by opening the
drivers
CD image in the VM.
Note
The IE6 network drivers must be installed upon first boot, or an
activation loop will prevent subsequent logins forever. If this happens,
restoring to the clean
snapshot will reset the activation lock.
The VHD archives are massive and can take hours or tens of minutes to download, depending on the speed of your internet connection. You might want to start the install and then go catch a movie, or maybe dinner, or both.
Once available and started in VirtualBox, the password for ALL VMs is "Password1".
Each version is installed into a subdirectory of ~/.ievms/vhd/
. If the installation fails
for any reason (corrupted download, for instance), delete the version-specific subdirectory
and rerun the install.
If nothing else, you can delete ~/.ievms
and rerun the install.
To specify where the VMs are installed, use the INSTALL_PATH variable:
INSTALL_PATH="/Path/to/.ievms" bash ievms.sh
- Clean Snapshot
A snapshot is automatically taken upon install, allowing rollback to the pristine virtual environment configuration. Anything can go wrong in Windows and rather than having to worry about maintaining a stable VM, you can simply revert to the
clean
snapshot to reset your VM to the initial state.The VMs provided by Microsoft will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage and cannot be activated. Unfortunately for us, that means our VMs will lock us out after 30 days of unactivated use. By reverting to the
clean
snapshot the countdown to the activation apocalypse is reset, effectively allowing your VM to work indefinitely.- Support for cabextract, p7zip, or wine to extract cab (IE6)
- If you have any of these packages available on your system, then we will use it! If not, p7zip (Linux x86) or cabextract (OS X) will be downloaded and used.
- Support for unrar, p7zip-rar, wine to extract rar (IE7 and above)
- Just the same. If you dont have any of these packages, then p7zip (Linux x86) or unrar will be downloaded.
- Latest unrar from rarlab.com
- If needed, the script will download latest version of unrar (freeware), packed for osx, linux or linux-x64.
- Wine?
- All the packages provided by Microsoft are self-extract containers (cab or rar) for Windows. Wine is a compatibility layer that provide support to use the file as your own extractor.
- Support for Axel, Wget or Curl
- If you have
axel
download accelerator on your system, it will be used! Otherwise, the script will look forwget
orcurl
commands to perform downloads and resumes. - Resuming Downloads
- If one of the comically large files fails to download, the downloader
command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off.
Thanks to a
.part
suffix, the downloads can be easily identifyed and resumed.
None. (To quote Morrissey, "take it, it's yours")