As it happens, getting Internet Explorer to work in Linux is relatively straightforward. The tricky bit it pulling the various pieces of the puzzle together.

Install Wine and Internet Explorer
Because the problem of not having access to IE within Linux is such a common problem, some nice people have put together an install process that installs both Wine and IE with minimal fuss. It’s called IEs4Linux. To make the process as painless as possible there’s a step by step guide available here. The most important thing to remember is to carry out the install as a normal user, i.e. NOT the root user.

If you’re running Ubuntu Gutsy then for step 2 add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy universe
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt gutsy main

When asked if I wanted to install IE5.5 or IE5.0 I said no. That meant that only IE 6 was installed. Installing all three isn’t a problem but I had no need for 5.0 and 5.5.

Once the process has finished you should have an Internet Explorer icon on your desktop.

Installing the Java Runtime Environment Plug-in for IE
This was the part that I was a little unsure about. I thought getting IE to run was an achievement but I never thought the IE JRE plug-in would work. As luck would have it I came across this post by Ranjit Mathew that was exactly what I needed.

Following Ranjit’s post here are the steps I carried out…

i) Go to the Sun website and download the latest version of the Windows 1.5 JRE. The reason for using 1.5 and not the latest 1.6 is that the ROS website states that they only support Sun 1.5 on IE6. The 1.6 version may work but I didn’t want to tempt faith.

ii) Open a command prompt and execute the following lines,

export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.ies4linux/ie6
wine jre-1_5_0_13-windows-i586-p.exe

iii) I was having some problems with the entire screen blacking out when I’d visit a page with a Java applet on it. If you have the same problem open a command prompt and execute these commands…

export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.ies4linux/ie6
regedit

Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Java2D\1.5.0_13 and set the property “DXAcceleration” to 0.

Installing The ROS Software
When you visit the ROS website for the first time you’ll have to install the KCrypto software. KCrypto is the Java code that handles the secure transfer of data between your browser and the NIB servers. The first time I tried to install it it failed. The second time it worked fine.

Installing your ROS Certificates
Your ROS security certificates are held in the folder C:\ROS on your Windows machine. Copy this entire folder from your Windows machine into the folder $HOME/.ies4linux/ie6/drive_c. When you restart your IE browser you should see your user id appear on the ROS logon page.

Installing you NIB UserID File
i) Logon to your NIB account on your Windows machine
ii) Click on “Settings” at the top of the page and then “Security” in the left hand menu
iii) Select the function “Back up user ID” and click OK
iv) On the next screen click OK. Take the file that’s downloaded and go back to your Linux machine
v) Start up IE and go to the logon page
vi) Select “Search for user id” just under the userid and password fields. Browse to where you have the file downloaded in step iv, select the second radio button (i.e. copy to a local location) and click OK

That’s it. One step closer to going Linux full time.

The API is completely separate from the the command line tool so it’s available if you want to use it in your own Java programs. Javadocs are here.

Since this is a learning exercise full source code and Maven pom.xml are included in the distribution. The URL is http://www.17od.com/meteor-websms.

Why oh why do some people still think that it’s ok to have “just one or two” drinks and then drive? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Martin Ferris TD was brought in and tested on Friday night after having two pints and a glass of wine. He thought to himself, ah sure I’m fine, I’ve only had the two pints. That’s just crazy talk. Even one drink is enough to impair your judgment.

Some people seem to think that the aim of the not drinking and driving is so that they won’t be caught by the Gardaí­. The aim is that they don’t kill/injure themselves or other people. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

What Martin Ferris did was wrong for so many reasons but it’s his reaction that really annoys me. All he seems to be sorry about is that he was caught.

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