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 and IE11 running in separate virtual machines.
Just paste this into a terminal:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
- VirtualBox (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
1.) Install VirtualBox and check the Requirements
2.) Download and unpack ievms:
-
To install IE versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
-
To install specific IE versions (IE7 and IE9 only for example) use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9" 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.
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.
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
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
A full ievms install will require approximately 48G:
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
3.4M ievms-control-0.1.0.iso
4.6M lsar
4.5M unar
4.1M unar1.5.zip
48G 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 37G 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
37G total
A full installation will download roughly 7.5G 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 74G (39G if cleaned post-install) and around 17G 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
- 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.
None. (To quote Morrissey, "take it, it's yours")