I'm successfully using zoneminder in a home environment. Thanks to the devs for their continued passion.
Following I'd like to share the steps I took to interact with java applets which set motion detection zones on Axis 209 cameras.
TLDR: How to downgrade your browser and java version to access discontinued java applets on pre 2015 AXIS cameras.
Background: I'm trying to offload the motion detection to the camera(s) to free up the server's cpu.
To do so, the cameras' need to be configured and have their detection zones set accordingly. BUT axis used a java applet to do that.
HOWEVER, applets have been discontinued after ~2015 with the emergence of HTML5 and current browsers no longer provide the tools to access the cameras' motion detection features.
Here's my setup: Debian 11 "Bullseye", firefox 19, Oracle java 7, zoneminder 1.32.
Please note that I don't provide a Copy-Paste solution with commands ON PURPOSE.
If you don't know what you're doing you probably don't know how to create necessary backups. If you rely on your browser's configuration you can seriously screw things up by accidentally deleting your password safe etc. However, man pages are readily available online to help.
Essentially you need to use a browser version that still supports java plugins and you need a java version that still supports java plugins.
As per Mozilla, any firefox version number below 50 should do the trick. As per Oracle any java version number below 8 should work.
I can confirm that Firefox 19 and Java JRE 1.7.0_80 work. JRE stands for Java Runtime Environment. It provides all the necessary tools to RUN java programs. There's also the Java SDK. SDK stands for Software Development Kit. It includes the JRE as well as tools to DEVELOP Java programs.
Both work, but only JRE is required. Just FYI.
First you need to get the old software. Here are the links:
Firefox: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rel ... 4wLjAuMA..
Java JRE: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologie ... loads.html
PLEASE NOTE: Oracle requires that you have an account in order to download the older version.
Now "install" the packages. As for Firefox, unpack the tar ball to a folder of your choice. Then access the mozilla plugins folder
by going to /home/USERNAME/.mozilla .
You'll notice that there is no plugins folder. You have to create the folder /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/plugins .
For the sake of simplicity I've unpacked the JRE file into the "plugins" folder. This way I was able to keep my installed (OPENJDK) java version.
Fun fact, openjdk doesn't cut it. You NEED the oracle version of Java. After unpacking the file you must create a symbolic link to the corresponding plugin file. This link must be placed in the "plugins" folder. Apparently it is not enough to merely copy the file into the folder as it relies on relative paths to work properly.
The plugin file you want to link to is "/home/USERNAME/.mozilla/plugins/jre1.7.0_80/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so"
The last step is to open the Java Control Panel and to set the security settings to Medium in order to allow the execution of applets of unknown origin.
To do that run /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/plugins/jre1.7.0_80/bin/ControlPanel and go to the security tab to make the corresponding changes.
Now everything should be good to go. Keep in mind not to use the old browser version to access the internet as it's a security risk. Only use it to access the axis camera's motions detection settings.
As for Windows, the steps would be comparable I assume. You may have to switch the java version system wide though as I'm unaware of how to make the old firefox use the old java version. I have no idea how other browsers may behave. Mac is essentially a unix derivative and the instructions should work the same -ish.
Hope that helps.
Marcus
