Overview

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, IE9 and IE10 running in separate virtual machines.

NOTE: As of Feb. 1st, 2013, the MS images are fully compatible with Virtualbox, thanks to the modern.IE project.

Requirements

VirtualBox (http://virtualbox.org)
Curl (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install curl)
Linux Only: unzip (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install unzip)
Patience

Installation

Install VirtualBox (make sure command line utilities are selected and installed).
Download and unpack ievms:
- Install IE versions 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
  
  curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
- Install specific IE versions (IE7 and IE9 only for example):
  
  curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9" bash
Launch Virtual Box.
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 a subdirectory of ~/.ievms/ova/. 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.

Specifying the install path

To specify where the VMs are installed, use the INSTALL_PATH variable:

curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | 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.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | CURL_OPTS="--limit-rate 50k" bash

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.

Resuming Downloads

If one of the comically large files fails to download, the curl command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off.

License

None. (To quote Morrissey, "take it, it's yours")

joemaffia / ievms