Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

Tutorial posted March 22nd, 2007 by eric
in
Platforms:

All EXE files on a Symbian 9 device shall be located in "/sys/bin", which is, in most of the case, not accessible from a File Explorer. There is however a nice side effect which would allow you to start your EXE file using a File Explorer on a S60 3rd Edition device.

We discovered this very dummy trick some times ago, when we initially received our first S60 3rd edition device, while porting one of our application to this platform. There was an error in a PKG file and our EXE has been written to the device to a wrong directory (any directory publicly accessible will do it). A previous version of the EXE was also located in /sys/bin. Using our SysExplorer, we tried to launch the publicly visible EXE file. And to our big surprise, it started its equivalent located in /sys/bin.

So, if you really need to start your own exe:
-  copy it in /sys/bin as usual.
-  duplicate it (or any other exe, only the name is meaningful) in a publicly visible directory.
-  using SysExplorer (not tried with other file explorer, but it does not work with the built-in one), go to the public directory and open the visible EXE file.

You should have started your /sys/bin/ Exe file.... Weird, isn't it!


Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On March 22nd, 2007 Csaba (not verified) said:

I think the reason behind this is the following: the file explorer you are using does not specify the path of the executable, so the RProcess::Create will try to locate your executable based only on its name, and it will search for it in the sys/bin directories.

S60 3rd SDK help says about RProcess::Create: "If no path is specified, the system will look in \System\Programs on all drives, in the usual search order. " (Please note: the SDK help is not updated, so \system\programs is written instead of sys\bin.)

Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On March 23rd, 2007 Srikanth (not verified) said:
Agree to some extent. But if what you are saying is true why it doesnt work with built in apps?

Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On March 23rd, 2007 eric said:

To CSaba: I have checked the source code of SysExplorer: it starts the EXE giving the full path, so there is a check within the OS which changes the path.

To Srikanth: I didn't say it didn't work with built-in application. I said the built-in file explorer couldn't launch an EXE using this indireciton. It may have some checks we don't implement or use another launching method. You can probably launch built-in application like this... if you know their executable name which is not public.

Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On April 11th, 2007 Anonymous said:
How can start the exe in emulator

Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On March 27th, 2007 Tom (not verified) said:
Bottom line here is that although the behavior is weird indeed the platform security is not compromised and the launched binary is the one trusted by the system.

Re: Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On June 19th, 2007 JohnSmith246 said:

I've tried to do it,
it worked, but after the exe terminates, I pressed back and got EIKON_LISTBOX 5 panic.
do you know what it is?

Re: Running an EXE from a file explorer on Symbian 9 device

On January 22nd, 2008 rameshrajan said:

i need file explorer for symbian but i cant download it. please send to my id.