Installing Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) on Linux (Ubuntu)

Posted Saturday 21st August 2010

A lot of tutorials and articles show you how to install IE6 by using IEs4Linux. By the look of things Ies4Linux hasn’t been updated for years and, through personal experience, it becomes more problematic with each distribution update. If, like me, you sometimes have to support IE6 for your clients then here’s a quick alternative method to install IE6 on wine using winetricks.

Wine comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (what I’m using) but to make sure you can run this command:

1	sudo apt-get install wine

If a wine version isn’t returned it will install wine for you. ~~Winetricks should be in the default repositories too.~~ In the terminal run this command:

1
2
3

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
sudo mv winetricks /usr/local/bin

Now that you have wine/winetricks you can easily install IE6 on wine by running this command:

1	winetricks ie6

Wait for it to download and follow the prompts installing it as you would on a Windows operating system. You can now run Internet Explorer 6 by using the following command:

1	wine "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE"

Of course you won’t want (well shouldn’t) to run IE6 to browse the web but it’s a great hassle free way for testing websites on Linux.

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Posted in Ubuntu, Website Development | 15 Comments »

15 Comments

Cross Browser Testing on Linux | Daniel Gibbs Journal 22 August 2010 12:15 am

[...] Systems. However it can be run under Wine fairly easily. If you only need IE6 take a look at Installing IE6 on Ubuntu via a Wine utility called Winetricks. There are a variety of online resources that will explain how [...]
Rizos 10 September 2010 8:54 pm

Thanks!
Gibbs 11 September 2010 11:29 am

Updated the winetricks commands. Winetricks isn’t in the default Ubuntu repos.
Andrej Pavelka 22 December 2010 1:12 am

Thanks. Very good! Finally, I can use IE. Sory for my english, I’m from Slovakia.
Andrys 8 February 2011 8:44 pm

Thanks. Very useful! I am from Czech.
raf 1 March 2011 4:50 pm

NICE!!!
thanks a lot..
alpay önal » INSTALLING INTERNET EXPLORER 6 (IE6) ON LINUX (UBUNTU) 5 April 2011 5:32 pm

[...] http://www.dangibbs.co.uk/journal/installing-internet-explorer-6-ie6-on-linux-ubuntu Posted on 05 Nisan 2011 by admin. This entry was posted in linux. Bookmark the permalink. « Renk seçimi yapabileceğiniz bir sayfa. [...]
GCB 6 September 2011 6:31 am

Folks,

I get the following error when I attempt to install ie6. Pls help.

$ winetricks ie6
Executing w_do_call ie6
Executing load_ie6
Executing mkdir -p /home/gcb/.cache/winetricks/ie6
Downloading http://browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net/ie/win32/6.0/ie60.exe
to /home/gcb/.cache/winetricks/ie6
–2011-09-06 10:52:06–
http://browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net/ie/win32/6.0/ie60.exe
Resolving browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net… 173.236.192.130
Connecting to browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net|173.236.192.130|:80…
connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
2011-09-06 10:52:17 ERROR 404: Not Found.

——————————————————
Downloading http://browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net/ie/win32/6.0/ie60.exe
failed
——————————————————
Gibbs 20 September 2011 7:13 pm

Hi GCB,

It looks like the mirror being has been removed so you have a few options.

- Wait for the release of an newer version of Winetricks

- Manually download and install it from somewhere like http://www.oldversion.com/download-Internet-Explorer-6.0.html.

- Modify the script (/usr/local/bin/winetricks – line 7350 for me under load_ie6 function) and provide a working URL.
Mratin 7 November 2011 2:58 pm

If you download the file from Oldversion.com or someplace, and still want the winetricks-script to do it’s magic, enter ‘python -m SimpleHTTPServer’ (without the quotes) in the directory where you’ve downloaded the ie60.exe. winetricks should then be able to find the file at http://localhost:8000/ie60.exe.
Gibbs 7 November 2011 3:09 pm

Cheers for that Mratin, nice idea.
bhaskar 8 November 2011 11:01 am

Tried the following:
0. apt-get install wine
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
mv winetricks /usr/local/bin

1. Downloaded the IE60.exe file from olderversion site.
2. Used python as suggested: python -m SimpleHTTPServer
3. winetricks ie6 produced the following results:

# winetricks ie6
Executing w_do_call ie6
Executing load_ie6
Executing mkdir -p /root/.cache/winetricks/ie6
Downloading http://localhost:8000/ie60.exe to /root/.cache/winetricks/ie6
–2011-11-08 15:03:19– http://localhost:8000/ie60.exe
Resolving localhost… ::1, 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|::1|:8000… failed: Connection refused.
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:8000… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 42640788 (41M) [application/x-msdos-program]
Saving to: `ie60.exe’

100%[======================================>] 4,26,40,788 259M/s in 0.2s

2011-11-08 15:03:19 (259 MB/s) – `ie60.exe’ saved [42640788/42640788]

UnZipSFX 5.32 of 3 November 1997, by Info-ZIP (Zip-Bugs@lists.wku.edu).
End-of-central-directory signature not found.
Executing w_do_call msls31
msls31 already installed, skipping
Executing wine iexplore -unregserver
Using native,builtin override for following DLLs: iexplore.exe inetcpl.cpl itircl itss jscript mlang mshtml msimtf shdoclc shdocvw shlwapi urlmon
Executing winetricks_early_wine regedit C:\windows\Temp\_ie6\override-dll.reg
mv: cannot stat `/root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Internet Explorer/iexplore.exe’: No such file or directory
Setting Windows version to win2k
Executing winetricks_early_wine regedit C:\windows\Temp\_ie6\set-winver.reg
Executing cabextract -q -F inseng.dll /root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB
/root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB: No such file or directory
——————————————————
Note: command ‘cabextract -q -F inseng.dll /root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB’ returned status 1. Aborting.
——————————————————
#

4. Followed the error messages and navigated to

/root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Internet Explorer/

# ls -asl
total 36
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-11-08 14:57 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2011-11-08 14:54 ..
28 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 28248 2011-11-08 14:54 iexplore.exe.bak

copied iexplore.exe.bak to iexpore.exe

#cp iexplore.exe.bak iexplore.exe
# ls -l
total 56
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 28248 2011-11-08 15:05 iexplore.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 28248 2011-11-08 14:54 iexplore.exe.bak

5. Ran “winetricks ie6″ again [after removing the winetricks directory under .cache]:

# winetricks ie6
Executing w_do_call ie6
Executing load_ie6
Executing mkdir -p /root/.cache/winetricks/ie6
UnZipSFX 5.32 of 3 November 1997, by Info-ZIP (Zip-Bugs@lists.wku.edu).
End-of-central-directory signature not found.
Executing w_do_call msls31
msls31 already installed, skipping
Executing wine iexplore -unregserver
Using native,builtin override for following DLLs: iexplore.exe inetcpl.cpl itircl itss jscript mlang mshtml msimtf shdoclc shdocvw shlwapi urlmon
Executing winetricks_early_wine regedit C:\windows\Temp\_ie6\override-dll.reg
Setting Windows version to win2k
Executing winetricks_early_wine regedit C:\windows\Temp\_ie6\set-winver.reg
Executing cabextract -q -F inseng.dll /root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB
/root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB: No such file or directory
——————————————————
Note: command ‘cabextract -q -F inseng.dll /root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/IE 6.0 Full/ACTSETUP.CAB’ returned status 1. Aborting.
——————————————————

6. Followed the error messages and navigated to:

/root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/

#ls
override-dll.reg set-winver.reg

Please help.
Gibbs 8 November 2011 11:13 am

Hi bhaskar,

You shouldn’t really be doing this as root but still. As a test backup your wine directory with:

mv /root/.wine/ /root/.wine_backup/

And then retry. That should help rule out if it is/isnt a conflict with your Wine installation.
bhaskar 8 November 2011 11:26 am

1. As recommended I backed up the wine directory

2. Ran ‘winetricks ie6′ again

3. Results are the same as the last iteration.

#cd /root/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/temp/_ie6/

#ls
override-dll.reg set-winver.reg
Gibbs 8 November 2011 11:37 am

Problem was corrupt download.