Overview
Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, IE11 and MSEdge running in separate virtual machines.
Quickstart
Just paste this into a terminal:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
Requirements
- VirtualBox > 5.0 (http://virtualbox.org), select 'command line utilities' during installation
- Curl (Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install curl) - Linux Only: unar (Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install unar) - Patience
NOTE Use ievms version 0.2.1 for VirtualBox < 5.0.
Installation
1.) Install VirtualBox and check the Requirements
2.) Download and unpack ievms:
-
To install IE versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and EDGE use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
-
To install specific IE versions (IE7, IE9 and EDGE only for example) use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9 EDGE" bash
3.) Launch Virtual Box.
4.) Choose ievms image from Virtual Box.
The OVA images 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.
Recovering from a failed installation
Each version is installed into ~/.ievms/ (or INSTALL_PATH). If the installation fails
for any reason (corrupted download, for instance), delete the appropriate ZIP/ova file
and rerun the install.
If nothing else, you can delete ~/.ievms (or INSTALL_PATH) and rerun the install.
Specifying the install path
To specify where the VMs are installed, use the INSTALL_PATH variable:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env INSTALL_PATH="/Path/to/.ievms" bash
Passing additional options to curl
The curl command is passed any options present in the CURL_OPTS
environment variable. For example, you can set a download speed limit:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env CURL_OPTS="--limit-rate 50k" bash
Disk requirements
A full ievms install will require approximately 69G:
Servo:.ievms xdissent$ du -ch *
11G IE10 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
22M IE10-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
11G IE11 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
28M IE11-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
1.5G IE6 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
724M IE6 - WinXP.ova
717M IE6_WinXP.zip
1.6G IE7 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
15M IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe
1.6G IE8 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
16M IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe
11G IE9 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
4.7G IE9 - Win7.ova
4.7G IE9_Win7.zip
10G MSEdge - Win10-disk1.vmdk
5.1G MSEdge - Win10.ova
5.0G MSEdge_Win10.zip
3.4M ievms-control-0.3.0.iso
4.6M lsar
4.5M unar
4.1M unar1.5.zip
69G total
You may remove all files except *.vmdk after installation and they will be
re-downloaded if ievms is run again in the future:
$ find ~/.ievms -type f ! -name "*.vmdk" -exec rm {} \;
If all installation related files are removed, around 47G is required:
Servo:.ievms xdissent$ du -ch *
11G IE10 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
11G IE11 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
1.5G IE6 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
1.6G IE7 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
1.6G IE8 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
11G IE9 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
10G MSEdge - Win10-disk1.vmdk
47G total
Bandwidth requirements
A full installation will download roughly 12.5G of data.
NOTE: Reusing the XP VM for IE7 and IE8 (the default) saves an incredible
amount of space and bandwidth. If it is disabled (REUSE_XP=no) the disk space
required climbs to 95G (49G if cleaned post-install) and around 22G will be
downloaded. Reusing the Win7 VM on the other hand (also the default), saves
tons of bandwidth but pretty much breaks even on disk space. Disable it with
REUSE_WIN7=no.
Features
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.
Guest Control
VirtualBox guest additions are installed after each virtual machine is created (and before the clean snapshot) and the appropriate steps are taken to enable guest control from the host machine.
Resuming Downloads
If one of the comically large files fails to download, the
Unfortunately, the modern.IE download servers do not support resume.curl
command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off.
Reusing XP VMs
IE7 and IE8 ship from MS on Vista and Win7 respectively. Both of these
images are far larger than the IE6 XP image, which also technically supports
IE7 and IE8. To save bandwidth, space and time, ievms will reuse
(duplicate) the IE6 XP VM image for both. Virtualbox guest control is used
to run the appropriate IE installer within the VM. The clean snapshot
includes the updated browser version.
NOTE: If you'd like to disable XP VM reuse for IE7 and IE8, set the
environment variable REUSE_XP to anything other than yes:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env REUSE_XP="no" bash
Reusing Win7 VMs
Currently there exists a bug in VirtualBox (or possibly elsewhere) that disables guest control after a Windows 8 virtual machine's state is saved. To better support guest control and to eliminate yet another image download, ievms will re-use the IE9 Win7 image for IE10 and IE11 by default. In addition, the Win7 VMs are the only ones which can be successfully "rearmed" to extend the activation period.
NOTE: If you'd like to disable Win7 VM reuse for IE10, set the environment
variable REUSE_WIN7 to anything other than yes:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | REUSE_WIN7="no" bash
NOTE: It is currently impossible to install IE11 without reusing the Win7 virtual machine.
Control ISO
Microsoft's XP image uses a blank password for the IEUser, which disallows
control via Virtualbox's guest control by default. Changing a value in the
Windows registry enables guest control, but requires accessing the VM's hard
drive. A solution is to boot the VM with a special boot CD image which attaches
the hard disk and edits the registry. A custom linux build has been created
based on the ntpasswd bootdisk which
makes the required registry edits and simply powers off the machine. The ievms
script may then use Virtualbox guest controls to manage the VM.
The control ISO is built within a Vagrant Ubuntu VM.
If you'd like to build it yourself, clone the ievms repository, install
Vagrant and run vagrant up. The base ntpasswd boot disk will be downloaded,
unpacked and customized within the Vagrant VM. A custom linux kernel is
cross-compiled for the image as well.
Acknowledgements
- modern.IE - Provider of IE VM images.
- ntpasswd - Boot disk starting point and registry editor.
- regit-config - Minimal Virtualbox kernel config reference.
- uck - Used to (re)master control ISO.
License
None. (To quote Morrissey, "take it, it's yours")