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BSD Operating Systems

Running Solaris IE Binaries in FreeBSD? 35

Posted by Cliff from the executable-compatability dept.
Hugh asks: "I work for a company that requires all its employees to use Internet Explorer, but they have no problem with "alternative" operating systems. As such, I would like to run FreeBSD but because there is no BSD IE binary, I would need to run the Solaris binary. BSD has a great Solaris compatibility layer, but I have not had any success getting it to work with IE. I was wondering if anyone else had any input on the topic?"
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Running Solaris IE Binaries in FreeBSD? More

Running Solaris IE Binaries in FreeBSD?

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  • ie for sparc (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unixbob ( 523657 ) on Wednesday November 28, 2001 @08:07AM (#2624050)
    Presumably you are running FreeBSD on an x86 box. How good will your binary compatibility be with IE for Solaris when you can only get it for sparc?

    • Re:ie for sparc (Score:2, Interesting)

      by XoXus ( 12014 )
      Yes, I'd doubt very much whether you'll get this to work at all, if you are running on an x86 box.

      I think your only option would be to run it via a forwarded X11 connection to a Solaris box.

      Ahhhh.... bring on Transmeta's Crusoe!
  • Your company sounds clueless. There's no sensible reason to enforce a certain browser. And *certainly* no even halfway sensible reason to allow any OS the user wants, but still insist on a spesific browser.

    IE on Solaris is a complete dog. And it won't work any *better* even if you manage to by some kludge make it work under some other unix. Exporting it over the network with X11 works, but seriously, what's it all for ? Why can't you just use a browser that works on your OS ? Mozilla ?
    I'd ask my boss for the reason for such an idiotic policy. If the answer is not satisfactory, go work for someone who actually has a clue. You'll only regret working for idiots in the long term anyway.
    • At my past job, they also enforced the "IE is corperate standard" polocy. They however did allow employies to use other browsers if they wanted, but they would get no support from the help desk. It was a stratigy to lower opperating costs, or so they said. Ironicaly, you were not suppose to download/install any software without IT's approval, so you were SOL unless you had the power to say "I need this for this reason."

      Also, more recently, I have run into a few things at my current job that have IE requiored, due to features built in to it. These are mainly features with Java and Orical DB stuff. Opera and Netscape would not run the Java we have in place at the time of implementaion.

      • There's no sensible reason to enforce a certain browser.

      That is not entirely true. The company I work for uses an Intranet application that makes use of a LOT of ActiveX type things that IE has built into it. Unfortunately, the html and javascript code in the pages are also tuned to IE and that makes the page look like goat crap in Netscape.

    • IE runs on Solaris, HP-UX, Mac, and of course Windows. (It's very, very interesting that they haven't done a Linux port!) Probably the degree of compatibility between these versions is not what MS would have you believe. But it's still better than that between IE and other browsers. Face it, browser vendors just aren't very good at following standards. So if you need to have all your web apps act the same, you need everybody using the same browser.

      Agreed that IE for Solaris is flaky. But compare it to the alternatives! A couple years ago, I was working for a Solaris-only company where a lot internal docs (meeting minutes, project plans, etc.) were written in HTML. At the time my choices were Netscape 4.0 and IE. Solaris Netscape crashed a lot, and had some silly limitations. (Hello! Page numbers on printouts are a basic feature!) So I used IE. Had problems of its own, but still better than Netscape. If I were there now, I'd probably want to switch to Konqueror -- but there are still pages that the K can't render correctly!

    • Actually there are alot of companies that do this...
      The one I am at enforces IE because it allows them to use the pass through security on internal sites...that doesn't work with any other browser...all the IIS servers are set to accept NT Challenge response only, basic Auth is truned off.
    • Companies that are Windows 2000 shops will require IE, because MS Proxy servers in native mode will only authenticate with IE or with a proxy client (only available for Windows)
      • That's not a particularily good reason, given that proxy-servers that work with all browsers, IE and otherwise are freely available for all common operating-systems.

        This merely moves the problem. "Why must I use IE?" changes into "Why do you use proprietary shit for something as simple as a proxy-server?".

        I don't know about you. But I've got better things to do with my time than battling PHB's for permission to use the tools that will allow me to get my job done efficiently.
        • I agree with you in that regard.

          Unfortunately, the security/gestapo group controls the firewalls, not me. The Nazis want all outgoing connections to be authenticated against the W2k domain via active directory. They disallow non-ntlm connections to enforce this.

          I have better things to do than fight powerhungry lunatics -- so I connect to my home pc via citrix and do everything from there.
    • I work for one of those too, there's not IE only policy, and I'd love to use mozilla or kmeleon, but the dumb MS Proxy server only allows MS authentication.

      does anyone have a way around this?
    • Very large companies have to make standards like this. Otherwise, they're spending all their time writing code for every browser ever known to man. They want to write more code, not fix bugs, so they create a corporate standard browser (which may be a part of a larger "blessed" operating environment on a PC).

      I don't like it, but I can understand why they do it.

      PS: Also, application vendors, such as SAP, can push them into this corner, too.
      • Bullshit. All they have to do is write code, and use servers which follow the established standards.

        Then any standards-compliant browesr will work. Yes, I'm aware that no 100% compliant browser exists, but a few are close enough to work well in practice.

        It's a *long* time since I saw a page that validated under validator.w3.org but still failed to work ok in both Mozilla, Galeon and IE.
  • Do they actually check the logs to see which browsers are going out or just come and look over your shoulder?

    If it's the latter, then you might want to consider theming Mozilla to look like IE. This might save you a great deal of hassle and make the browser considerable more responsive!
  • Which would be an IE "replicant" theme, for the visuals, coupled with modified headers etc. for complete simulation of IE. I would personally take a crack at this, but I have not been able to find out how to even write themes for mozilla (go ahead - try a web search and see if you come up with a HOWTO - I'd be delighted if it were posted). Unless your company is using some ocx controls, or just has lame javascript, or applets with depracated java, most stuff should work acceptably or very well in Mozilla - yes folks, it's now that good. Galeon is excellent too, but no plug-ins seem to be in it.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 28, 2001 @11:10AM (#2624513)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • if you're already ready to try emulating another platform, why dont you just go all out and use wine. it will allow you to use the ie that the company has most likely tested all their websites with.

    that isnt to say that a stealth mode mozilla isnt a cool idea.
  • Is VNC a possibility? Before I had IE for Sparc on my workstation, I VNC'd over to a laptop and did my work from my UNIX workstation.

    As an aside, I use IE for Solaris (on Sparc) for those pesky few corporate web pages which require IE. For everything else, I'm still using netscape. (Also, the IE for Sparc also now includes Outlook!)

    About the BSD compatibility thing... was that a Solaris library compatibility, or SPARC processor and Solaris library compatibility? I'm just wondering if it only works for Solaris code on Intel.
  • Hate to turn this into a help-me post, but I have never suceeded starting IE for Solaris (both 5.6 and 5.8). The program just sort of runs but no GUI thingy comes out.

    Any help here?

  • Err, Yes and No (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Toodles ( 60042 ) on Wednesday November 28, 2001 @12:53PM (#2625057) Homepage
    If you're expecting to run the actual binaries, your outta luck. What you CAN do though is 'back display' it if you have solaris running on another box on your network, or even under VMWare (notice, I havent tried Solaris under VMWare, don't even know if its possible).

    On your box with the XServer (FreeBSD in this case):

    $xhost +solaris.box.ip.here

    On the Solaris box:

    $DISPLAY=insert.your.ip.here:0
    $export DISPLAY
    $./ie &

    It should display on your FreeBSD Xserver just like you want. I have done this for quite a while to get the HP/UX version of IE running on an Apollo 735 to display on my Linux box. A fast network is obviously preferred.

    Toodles

    • (notice, I havent tried Solaris under VMWare, don't even know if its possible).

      Not that it helps in this case (IE for Solaris is Sparc-only [microsoft.com]), but Solaris supposedly can run in VMWare for Linux, but not VMWare running on Windows. Well, that's not entirely true. Supposedly it can install only on a Linux host, but once it's installed it can run on either host platform.

    • Better yet, just ssh to the solaris server, with X-forwarding and compression automatically enabled.

      Since IE for solaris is a SPARC binary, not x86... well, it might be tough to run it in VMWAre.

      By the way - Mozilla runs better on Solaris than IE does, and Konquerer isn't too shabby, either...
      • I haven't been able to get Mozilla to work on Solaris, because I've only got the libstdc++.a file and I need .so. There are hundreds of sets of instructions for unpacking the archive and making a shared library out of it, and I've had a go myself, but there are exports that just don't seem to work properly on execution...

        How did you do this, do you have any suggestions?
        Thanks in advance...
    • I can never get to this work? Does the XServer have to be started on the second machine already or do I start it after I do the DISPLAY=ip export DISPLAY bit?
  • Codeweavers has a plugin for netscape that allows you to run Windows plugins... including ActiveX plugins (If thats why you need IE). Since Mozilla, Galeon, and Konqueror can all use netscape plugins, you can use the codeweavers plugin with all of them.

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