Loading dll from applet

[George Anadiotis]

Hello all

This one has been posted at Sun's site forums as well, but since i got
no reply from there i thought i'd try my luck here as well. So here
goes:

I am trying to develop an applet whose funtionality includes loading a
..dll library and invoking some function implemented as native code.
The dll implementation is actually third-party, but i am pretty
confident there's nothing wrong with it because it works fine when
invoked in a standalone application.

Before going any further, i should note that i am aware of security
restrictions, signing applets etc - i have temporarily bypassed that
limitation during development by granting a
java.security.AllPermission permission in my JRE policy file.

In fact, the dll itself even works fine when invoked from the applet
source directory - i.e. directory source contains the applet class
file and the dll file, so when opening the applet using appletviewer
and a test html page that contains something like this: <APPLET
CODE='PrintApplet.class' WIDTH=426 HEIGHT=322>, everything works fine.

Trouble starts when i try to package the applet source and the dll
into a jar file and open it again using the same procedure, only this
time using something like this in my html:
<APPLET CODEBASE="C:/testdir/PrintApplet" archive="PrintApplet.jar"
CODE="PrintApplet" WIDTH=426 HEIGHT=322>

In this scenario, the dll is loaded using:
InputStream in = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("ShellExec.dll");

and then saved on the client disk using a FileOutputStream.

What happens then is that i get the following stacktrace:

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: C:\testdir\PrintApplet\ShellExec.dll:
Invalid access to memory location
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1473)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1368)
at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Runtime.java:737)
at java.lang.System.load(System.java:809)
at ShellExec.<clinit>(ShellExec.java:19)
at PrintApplet.testPrint(PrintApplet.java:200)
at PrintApplet.clearButton_ActionPerformed(PrintApplet.java:215)
at PrintApplet$SymAction.actionPerformed(PrintApplet.java:159)
at java.awt.Button.processActionEvent(Button.java:381)
at java.awt.Button.processEvent(Button.java:350)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:3639)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:3480)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:450)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(EventDispatchTh
read.java:197)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThre
ad.java:150)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:144)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:136)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:99)


This seems to suggest that the dll is actually loaded, but then
something gives. Any ideas as to what may be the issue here?

Thanks in advance,
George Anadiotis