Hi,
I am getting error when i click “Java File Manager” in Webmin . Error: “This module requires Java to function, but your browser does not support Java”.
I am using “FireFox 52.0.1 (32-bit)” and latest java version. Also this error is showing in all Browser.
How to solve it? Please help!
Java applet modules in Virtualmin/Webmin have all been deprecated. There is a new File Manager module that uses HTML5 and JavaScript, and does not require any browser plugins. If there are any features from the old Java File Manager you’re missing, let us know, and we’ll try to get them implemented…but, as far as I know, the new File Manager does more than the old one.
If you really need to make the Java modules work, you’d need to get the Java plugin for your browser working. I’m pretty sure Chrome has made it almost impossible to enabled, but I was able to get it working in Firefox a few months ago. Here’s an article about it, which might help? https://www.java.com/en/download/help/firefox_java.xml
But, really, you should just leave Java applets behind. Use the new file manager, and help us make it better, if there’s something missing.
Thanks Joe,
In new file manager, i am getting one issue in folder permission. There is not any option to give permission for current folder only.
I am seeing below options :
“Selected directories and files only
Selected files and directories and files in selected directories
All (recursive)
Selected files and files under selected directories and subdirectories
Selected directories and subdirectories”
But there is not any option like “This directory only”, it was in “Java file manager”
Please check and advise!
If you have only selected one directory, the option “Selected directories and files only” does exactly what you want.
“Selected” means the files or directories that you have selected by checking them or right clicking them. Any files that are not selected will not have their permissions changed.
Hi Joe,
Had to jump in here…
There are so, so many things missing in the new file manager, here are just a few that I wrote about in my post: https://virtualmin.com/node/39304
Folder tree (left frame) always visible for easy navigation and good view of folders.
Ability to have several folders open at the same time in the folder tree view.
Ability to open several files for editing, also from different folders and having them all up front and at the same time.
Ability to search in edit mode.
Ability to search an replace in edit mode.
Ability to extract zip-files
Ability to upload zip-files and unpack and delete zip in one action.
This I use all the time to update many files in many folders in one upload. Would be a real pain and take a really long time to do it file by file.
And the Java File Manager still works, you just have to do a few small steps to get it to work. If you are using Firefox, version 51x works without any changes, in version 52.x you have to add a string to about:config to enable java applets, and in upcoming version 53 they have removed the ability to activate java applets.
From version 53 lots of people are going to have problems with Firefox and probably leave it for some other browser. There are lots of java applets still out there, many companies and also banks are still using them… and I think it will take a while before they all have other newer non-java applets.
//Leffe
Browsers who stop supporting java applet:
Not sure for:
Bonus:
So i’m not sure what banks are still using it but i would like to advise to change the bank.
Java plugin/applet is dead and if there is still some SysAdmin who is running this garbage on his server(s) he should resign and kill himself.
Hi Diabolico,
You are wrong, Firefox 52 ESR still supports java plugins, and they will continue supporting Firefox 52 ESR with security updates to second quarter 2018. And I think it’s possible to enable java plugin support in most of the browsers in your list. Seriously, why would anybody change bank because they still use some java plugin in some of their services. There still are many things using java plugins and people still depends on in.
Virtualmin don’t have any other file manager that can do the things the Java File Manager can, at least not yet, and until there is I’m going to use the excellent and outstanding Java File Manager… without resigning and killing my self!
I really like your last line, that is a really grown up statement!
//Leffe
From Oracle:
Moving to a Plugin-Free Web
By Dalibor.Topic-Oracle on Jan 27, 2016
By late 2015, many browser vendors have either removed or announced timelines for the removal of standards based plugin support, eliminating the ability to embed Flash, Silverlight, Java and other plugin based technologies.
With modern browser vendors working to restrict and reduce plugin support in their products, developers of applications that rely on the Java browser plugin need to consider alternative options such as migrating from Java Applets (which rely on a browser plugin) to the plugin-free Java Web Start technology.
Oracle plans to deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9. This technology will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release.
Early Access releases of JDK 9 are available for download and testing at http://jdk9.java.net. More background and information about different migration options can be found in this short whitepaper from Oracle.
http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/289
For my last statement - thats just my sincere and deep from of my heart wish.
I have no problem moving from java plugins when there are a replacement that has all the same, and for me important features. But until then I will use the java plugin as long it is possible.
And I think it is a bit strange that Virtualmin allows people that tells and encourages other to kill them selves, and that it is his sincere and deep heart wish, how can they be allowed to post in this forum!!! I don’t think that kind of statement is not even close to be appropriate in any kind of forum. The lack of respect and the way that you react and express your self and is by far more dangerous than any java plugin/applet.
//Leffe
Diabolico, please keep it civil. Please don’t ever suggest someone should kill themselves in our forums (or anywhere else, but I don’t control anywhere else). I don’t like to moderate comments from community members who are participating in good faith, but you have to treat people with respect. Leffe has been around our community for many years and we respect his opinion (even when I might disagree).
Leffe, I saw a checkin for zip files a week or two ago. If it isn’t in there already, it should be in the next release.
I’ll chat with Ilia about the other stuff next time we talk. Not sure how some of it would be implemented without wrecking the UI, but some of it should be easy-ish.
Thanks Joe!
I normally don’t care so much what people write and how they express them selves, but this time Diabolico was way passed what should be accepted.
Regarding the file manager, as I told before, my work and updates on the virtual domains is done live with the Java File Manager, I often update several domains with the same code and the ability to open several smaller windows with files from many folders or domains at the same time is a must for me. I do all my coding in text windows so I have no need for any HTML of WYSIWYG editors. There are also so many other things missing in the new file manager. The Java File Manager works like the most file managers in desktop computers. I don’t know if its just me that use the file manager this way and this much?
And to neerajhbs,
If you want to use the Java File Manager in Firefox 52x, you have to enable NPAPI plugins by adding a line in the Firefox config.
Open about:config setting and add a new Boolean string, give it the name “plugin.load_flash_only” and then set it to false. Restart the browser - Done!
Of course you must have java installed and configured.
Keep in mind that if you have automatic updates on, Firefox will soon update to version 53 where they have removed the ability to enable the NPAPI plugin. If you want to stay updated with Firefox then I think you can use Firefox 52 ESR, which will have security updates until early or mid 2018.
//Leffe
I think you’re probably among the heaviest users of the old File Manager. (I hadn’t touched it in years, except for trying to reproduce bug reports.) 
But, we want to make heavy users happy, too. It’s a different workflow than what was envisioned when it was built, but I think there are ways to accommodate you. I know Ilia has tried to accommodate some of those needs already, but I guess it came out in a way that didn’t actually solve it for you. Tabs and multiple editor windows were both added to address the desire to have multiple things open, but I guess tabs and multiple editor windows doesn’t work for you?
I’m trying to figure out how we can satisfy that use case, if tabs and multiple editors won’t do it, without popping open new windows, and I’m not having any good ideas. I want to avoid relying on additional windows, since the weight of re-loading everything is so high (which might have been true of the Java applet as well, I don’t recall, as it’s been so long since I used it, and I don’t think I’ve ever used multiple windows). Ilia and I discussed the idea of a split window model (like the file managers of old, like Midnight Commander or Norton Commander or Opus from the Amiga, etc.), but that doesn’t seem like a good fit for modern uses.
I guess before I dig into this problem too much, can you confirm you’ve played with the (kinda new) tabs and multiple text editor support and found that wouldn’t work for you? To use tabs, just right click on the folder you want to open and select “Open in new tab”. And, then for editors, you just open up whichever files you want, and minimize them to be able to select others.
If it won’t work, is there a change we could make that would make it work? e.g. maybe multiple text editor windows visible at once? I dunno if that’s do-able, but I could talk to Ilia about it.
Hi Joe,
I have tried to use the new file manager many times, and for simple tasks it’s rather OK, although not for file editing. I have issues with some UTF-8 characters when I open a file for edit, especially our Swedish characters ÅÄÖ, they often is shown as a diamond with a question mark inside. And yes you can open multiple files for editing using different tabs but that in not a user friendly and time efficient way to work. In JFM you can have all windows up front and in view and still see your file managers navigation tree and selected folder contents.
I have also tried the upload and extraction of compressed files, and yes it works… kind of… all extracted files is root-root, in the JFM they get the directories user (if I have selected that in JFM config), otherwhere i can choose user before extraction. Sometimes I have hundreds of files and/or folders in a ZIP I upload, and doing this in the new file manager is a real pain!
And the going back and forth in folders all the time… yes you try it your self, imagine you have several domains you want to update with similar code, in JFM I can expand all domains to preferred folder, for simple overview and then open all files for editing in the same browser view for fast copy-paste, editing or compare. Try to accomplish that in the new file manager.
I know it’s wrong to be such a big fan of a dying Java plugin, and the reason I am is that there are no replacement that has the ability to do the same things yet.
The JFM has always loaded fast and has also been really fast when you use it and when working in the text editor, has a clean look and interface and is a real dream to work with. I know both Oracle and Firefox (that is the browser I use) is soon killing the Java Plugins, But before they do I will stop the “evolution” on one of my computers, stop all updates on OS and software to have a machine that still can run the JFM. I actually already has a cloned machine ready for it… 
I really hope you don’t remove the JFM module completely.
I also still use the old Virtualmin Framed Theme, I think it is cleaner and easier to work with. The Authentic Theme is really nice and looks new and fresh and would be my first choice if my customers had access to Webmin/Usemin/Virtualmin but they don’t, and has no wish to do so either, almost all our customers are municipalities and municipal companies and their contractors, we provide special online services and features for them and their citizens with our own software. We do store rather much information of all their citizens and this requires good security and high quality on our services. We have been providing these services for about 8 years now, almost without any problems or downtime… we have not been able to do this without Virtualmin Pro (with the JFM) and the support from Virtualmin crew.
I really hope there will be some worthy and competent replacement for the Java File Manager because it has been my most important feature/plugin in Virtualmin Pro.
Best regards,
Leffe
We’ll keep banging on the new file manager, and try to find ways to make it more suitable for everyone’s needs.
The Java File Manager won’t be a default module in Webmin in the near future, but, it will be available as a package you can install separately for a while longer. I’m not sure what we’ll do about it in Webmin 2.0. At that point, backward compatibility will break…it may prove difficult to port it forward. But, that’s also when the old themes will break. We’ll keep maintaining Webmin 1.x for several months for security updates only, maybe as long as a year (with the countdown starting around October of this year) for folks who can’t move forward for some reason, but the goal is to make it possible for everyone to come into the future with us.
So, we need to fix what makes the new stuff, both theme and file manager, not work for you. We’re too small of a team to maintain so much code across so many different variants; even with Ilia now helping out a bunch on the UI, core Webmin is still mostly on Jamie, and keeping Java running and applets signed and such has proven very time-consuming for him.
I’ll talk to Ilia about multiple editor windows.
Oh, another thing…if you’re using the old theme, you’re experience with the new File Manager will be extremely poor. Without the Authentic theme libs, a bunch of stuff falls back to pretty old-fashioned UI behavior. Lots of niceties are disabled, and a lot of things that make it faster to work with aren’t available. I’m not even sure it would work right…though Real Gecko’s original Filemin is still developed against the old theme, so that may be an option (but I don’t think it has tabs or multiple editors and a bunch of other features Ilia added).
And, on the UTF-8 characters issue, have you switched your language in Webmin to a UTF-8 character set? That issue with characters printing wrong should be fixed by using UTF-8.
Hi Joe,
To answer your last post regarding UTF-8 first. To get the correct characters I have to choose “English US (EN)”, then all characters are right. I always use ISO-8859-1 or Latin-1 when coding, using UTF-8 is a real pain to use if you have “special characters” like we do in Sweden. UTF-8 and BOM marks always brakes something and very often you have to change encoding back and forth all the time to get things to work!
I also noticed that the new file manager change the encoding of the file to UTF-8 and braking lots of things. The save command must NOT change the encoding of the file!!! I have language set to “English US (EN)” and still the FM changes the encoding to UTF-8!!! I’m glad I noticed this now, because I was about to start moving customers to the server tomorrow. Now I don’t know what to do, when you move to Webmin 2.0 and the JFM no longer work I will break most of my work if I save something in JFM! There has to be a option to change or leave the file encoding as it is when saving a file!
Regarding the Virtualmin Framed Theme vs. Authentic Theme. The Framed theme is really much faster, the Authentic theme always has a 1-3 seconds load on all pages! No big deal but still a step backwards! And yes, the Authentic theme is really nice, god looking and fresh, but still not so good to work with. Authentic theme has often windows in windows with scrollbars in browser and also scrollbars in the right window making it really hard to control everything, sometimes you have to scroll the top window to the bottom and then the page scroll before you can scroll the window to the right, and then scroll everything back to where you were.
The Authentic theme also don’t utilize the right pane space so good, there are always lots space around the “windows”, why is that?
The Upload and Download function also has some kind of bug, if you download a file or a folder(as a zip) then want to download another, you cant just browse to the file or location and click Download because the button is now disabled - You have to restart the module Upload and Download before the button is enabled again. In other words, you can only do one download, unless you start from scratch again.
Anyways, I appreciate that you are trying to solve this, and I really hope the major “bugs” (sorry for calling them bugs) like the file manager changing the file encoding gets sorted out. I think I have to do much more testing before I can start using the new server in production.
I don’t know if I should start a new post about this… because this no longer is about the “module requires java…” What do you think… start a new post and maybe add new comments one by one of my thoughts and things that I, in my opinion, think is missing or not working as it should?
Regards,
Leffe
If you use SV.UTF-8, it has incorrect characters in the UI? That would be a bug, but I can’t reproduce it. I’m able to use SV.UTF-8, and use ÅÄÖ in text files, filenames, etc, without issue…they all show up in the File Manager and everywhere else in the UI.
That said, File Manager changing encoding is definitely a problem! I didn’t even know it could do that.
What browser are you using and on what OS? It sounds like you’re describing a bunch of behaviors I’ve never seen. Maybe you can link me to a screenshot of what you’re seeing with regard to “windows in windows with scrollbars in browser and also scrollbars in the right window”? I mean, there are still two frames in Authentic (as in framed theme), so there can be a scrollbar in the left pane and a scrollbar in the right…but, that’s always been true, and will keep being true until we get to a single-page app model.
Some of these sound like actionable bugs; so, rather than starting a new thread, open a brief issue with a description, and Ilia is likely to fix them pretty quick. He watches for tickets marked “Authentic Theme” in the tracker here.
I’ll point Ilia to this thread, but it’s always easier to work from a short “here’s a problem and here’s how to reproduce it” than a big long conversation.
No, I think you misunderstood me, the UI is fine. The problem with the UTF-8 is when I use the File manager and view and edit files. Much of my remarks when I’m coding I do in Swedish, and sometimes to get things working correctly in our services and also in our text messages service (SMS) we have to use our Swedish characters “as is”. I have tried several times to open and edit a file with the new file manager and the Swedish characters are OK as long as I use “English US (EN)” when I view the file, but when I hit save they are changed to UTF-8. If I do the same in Java File Manager everything is OK, they still are in the same encoding, ISO-8859-1 or LATIN 1. On our old server we have used English US (EN) all the time, not the UTF-8. I don’t like to use Swedish in Virtualmin UI.
Sorry if I was unclear with the UTF problem, but it’s sometimes difficult for me to explain in English.
All my computers are PC’s, running latest Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. My browser is Firefox 52.1.0 ESR 32-bit, All my programming is done in UltraEdit Pro Text editor, and I use Norton Security Premium. My Windows OS is stripped down to its essential things, not even using the default file manager no more, it totally sucks in 7, 8.x and 10.
Yes, I understand the 2 frames, but the right frame often has a frame in the frame… one is the browsers scrollbar and in that frame with the scrollbar there can be another frame with both horizontal and vertical scrollbars. I’ll do some screenshots and post the links, probably later today.
I will also start a ticket - and I will try to be more short in my posts sorry about that!
Thanks!