iectrl

Command line interface and Node module for managing ievms virtual machines.

Requirements

For ievms:

• VirtualBox
• Curl (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install curl)
• Linux Only: unar (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install unar)

For iectrl:

• Node

Installation

Globally:

$ sudo npm install -g iectrl

Locally:

$ npm install iectrl

Usage

Command Line Interface

The iectrl command provides various sub-commands for manipulating one or many ievms virtual machines. The optional names argument may be a comma-separated (no spaces) list of virtual machine identifiers. The identifiers consist of a number representing a given version of IE, an OS name (WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8), or an exact virtual machine name (IE6 - WinXP, IE7 - Vista). See iectrl <sub-command> --help for more information:

$ iectrl --help

  Usage: iectrl [options] [command]

  Commands:

    clean [names] restore virtual machines to the clean snapshot
    close [names] close all running IE processes in virtual machines
    install [options] [names] install virtual machines with ievms
    nuke [names] remove all traces of virtual machines
    list         list available virtual machines
    open [options] [names] [url] open a URL in IE
    rearm [options] [names] rearm virtual machines
    reinstall [options] [names] reinstall virtual machines
    restart [options] [names] restart virtual machines
    screenshot [names] [output] save screenshots for virtual machines
    shrink [options] [names] shrink disk usage for virtual machines
    start [options] [names] start virtual machines
    status [options] [names] report the status of one or more vms
    stop [options] [names] stop virtual machines
    uninstall [options] [names] uninstall virtual machines
    uploaded [names] report the last time the VM was uploaded to modern.ie

  Options:

    -h, --help     output usage information
    -V, --version  output the version number

Node Module

See the annotated source or karma-ievms for usage examples.

Examples

Install all WinXP virtual machines from ievms (IE6 - WinXP, IE7 - WinXP, IE8 - WinXP):

$ iectrl install WinXP

Reinstall all Win7 virtual machines, plus IE 6 (IE6 - WinXP):

$ iectrl reinstall 6,Win7

Shrink the disk usage for IE10 by removing the .ova file used during install:

$ iectrl shrink 10

Open IE version 6 and 8 and navigate to http://modern.ie auto-starting the virtual machines if necessary:

$ iectrl open -s 6,8 http://modern.ie

Take a screenshot of the IE7 - Vista virtual machine, saving it to ./shots/IE7 - Vista.png:

$ iectrl screenshot 'IE7 - Vista' ./shots

Close all open IE browser windows:

$ iectrl close