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 IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.
- VirtualBox (http://virtualbox.org)
- Curl (Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install curl) - Linux Only: unrar (Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install unrar) - Patience
- Install VirtualBox.
- Download and unpack ievms:
Install IE versions 7, 8 and 9 - no support for IE6 currently
curl -s https://raw.github.com/jefftougas/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
Install specific IE versions (IE7 and IE9 only for example):
curl -s https://raw.github.com/jefftougas/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9" bash
- Launch Virtual Box
- Choose ievm image from Virtual Box
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 (lost Internet connection, 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:
curl -s https://raw.github.com/jefftougas/ievms/master/ievms.sh | INSTALL_PATH="/Path/to/.ievms" bash
- 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
cleansnapshot 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
cleansnapshot the countdown to the activation apocalypse is reset, effectively allowing your VM to work indefinitely.
None. (To quote Morrissey, "take it, it's yours")