Automates the process of getting the modern.ie images and converting them for usage with KVM. There are 3 scripts:
- ie-urls.sh
- Attempt to parse the relevant "Batch File Download" URLs from the modern.ie page
- fetch.sh (url)
- Given a URL to a .txt file full of URLs (like what MS link to), fetch all files within, uncompress and convert into a QCOW2 file for use with QEMU, which will be waiting for you in the current directory.
- start.sh (QCOW image)
- Fetch virtio.iso if not already there, and start the image with reasonable options
- Ensure depenencies are installed with
apt-get install wget unzip qemu-system-x86 qemu-utils
- Run
ie-urls.sh
to list available Windows / IE images, or go to http://modern.ie and copy the "Batch File Download" URL for the Linux/VirtualBox VM for the version of IE you want. - Run
fetch.sh http://../IE11.Win8.1.For.LinuxVirtualBox.txt
and wait. The multiple wgets will fight for the screen somewhat. - Run
start.sh (name of image)
. Or omit the name if you want to run the most recent QCOW2 file. - Install the virtio drivers from the CD drive. Change anything else you fancy
whilst you're there, e.g. home page to
http://10.0.2.2:8000
(your laptop's port 8000). - Shut down windows, note qemu is still running.
- At the QEMU command prompt, run
commit ide0-hd0
to write changes back to the QCOW2 file. - Delete the
workdir-*
once you're happy everything worked. If something went wrong you can run./fetch.sh
again to regenerate the QCOW2 file. It will not re-download files.
After this, you won't ever need to shut windows down properly, since by default start.sh writes changes to a temporary file and does not change the QCOW2 file.
Vista and WinXP can use the Win8 driver incorrectly. Select the directory manually and then install.
If you want to have a VM that's customised for your project somehow, you could just copy the .qcow2, however that's a lot of diskspace. Instead you can create a new image that's based on the contents of another file, for example:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b "IE9 - Win7.qcow2" MyProject.IE9.Win7.qcow2