MS IE 5.0 on HP-UX 10.20

[Kong Kian Chay]

I installed MS IE 5.0 on HP-UX 10.20 B2000 Workstation.

However, I found that MS IE 5.0 can be used only by users with a LOCAL Home-Directory. For users with an NFS-mounted Home-Directory, upon executing "iexplorer", the Terms & Conditions Window will pop-up, but after clicking "Accept", it will just simply hang there.

Any body have a solution to this ? I am also having the same kind of problem on the cad-cam application "SYNOPSIS".

[Alex Glennie]

Internet Explorer/Outlook Express 4.01 for HPUX Readme

Note: We highly recommend that Internet Explorer and Outlook
Express be installed locally and not in an NFS mounted
partition. Depending on the performance of your network and
the NFS configuration, Internet Explorer
initialization performance may degrade unsatisfactorily.

For optimum performance, Internet Explorer should have a
cache and user settings on the local machine as well. The
cache and user settings are stored in the '.microsoft' sub-
directory of the users' home directory. To allow Internet
Explorer to cache and store user settings locally, create a
'.microsoft' directory on a local filesystem
(/usr/local/.microsoft, for example). Copy the contents of
the existing '.microsoft' directory to the new directory.
Finally, create a soft link from your home directory to this
local directory as follows:

% ln -s /usr/local/.microsoft ~/.microsoft

Note: If multiple users share a single machine, then they
should each create and link to unique '.microsoft'
directories.

o If you install Internet Explorer on a host machine, and
use NFS to mount the installation on another machine
using a _different_ pathname, then you will not be able
to execute Internet Explorer on the second machine.
Similarly, if you move the installation directory to a
different pathname, you will not be able to execute
Internet Explorer. In both cases you will receive the
following error message:

"Internet Explorer is not currently supported for HP-UX
B.10.20."

To fix the problem, ensure that the environment variable
MSFT_HOME is set to the name of the installation
directory before starting Internet Explorer. For example,
if you mounted or renamed the installation directory as
/net/myhost/local/ms, then execute this command: (csh)
setenv MSFT_HOME /net/myhost/local/ms/
or
(sh) MSFT_HOME=/net/myhost/local/ms/ ; export MSFT_HOME

Note the trailing "/" character.

You may use alternative approaches. For example,
experienced users may prefer to make a copy of the
"bin/iexplorer" command, which is a simple shell script,
and change the directory reference on line 3.

Note that different implementations or configurations of
automounters may introduce the NFS naming inconsistency.

NB Also beaware CDE has automouter issues : check the Sys Admin Guide. I would check the release notes for ie5 I'm sure they maje similar interesting reading ?

[Anthony Goonetilleke]

This might not be the correct answer you are looking for but after a lot of testing we decided to use Netscape over IE due to the performace with java applets but like I said this might not be an issue with you

[Kong Kian Chay]

Alex & Anthony :

Thank you for taking time out to help me to look at the issue.

We do hav NetScape but is just thinking of moving to IE. And, IE's readme doc did contain all those info about NFS constraints. Just thought somebody may hav a solution to it.

Looks like we hav to stick to Netscape.

Thanks again for your effort and time.