Why is my program unable to access its required files?

Question

I have written a program using Qt libraries for an embedded device that runs on Linux generated by Buildroot. To start my program I've created a script called S80custom and placed it in /etc/init.d/ directory. The content of the script is:

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -d "/root/files/" ]; then
    mkdir /root/files/
fi

if [ ! -d "/root/Test/" ]; then
    mkdir /root/Test/
fi

if [ ! -d "/root/Test/Log/" ]; then
    mkdir /root/Test/Log/
fi

export TSLIB_CONSOLEDEVICE='none'
export TSLIB_FBDEVICE='/dev/fb0'
export TSLIB_TSDEVICE='/dev/input/event1'
export TSLIB_PLUGINDIR='/usr/lib/ts'
export TSLIB_CONFFILE='/etc/ts.conf'
export TSLIB_CALIBFILE='/etc/pointercal'
export QWS_MOUSE_PROTO=tslib:'/dev/input/event1'

/root/Test/Test -qws

However when my program runs at system start-up, it can't access the files placed at /root/files. I've used QFile class and its member functions for the same. I’ve tried Standard C++ Libraries and they work, but strangely QFile is unable to open the files and I must use QFile for this task.

What am I doing wrong here?

I should also mention here that when I run my application from command prompt after I login, it works perfectly.

EDIT
As requested in the comments this is the portion of the code that is suppose to open a file:

QDir directory = QDir::home();
if(!directory.cd("files")){
    LOG << directory << "does not exist or path incorrect. trying to make it";
    if(directory.mkdir("files"))
    {
        LOG << "made directory \"files\" at" << directory.absolutePath();
        directory.cd("files");
    }
    else
        LOG << "couldn't make diretory... do we have enough priviledges?";
}

fileName = directory.absoluteFilePath("PARMLIST.BIN");

qDebug() << "filename to open:" << fileName;


QFile file(fileName);
QDataStream in(&file);

if(!file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly))
{
    if(CONF_INT("rdu.active") != 1)
        AlarmManager::getInstance().setAlarm(102, true);
    else
        AlarmManager::getInstance().setAlarm(184, true);
    paramMissing = true;

    return;
}

The mechanism for setting alarms is activated, and that code tells me the files are missing or corrupted. Apart from that I get no errors. Also I tried giving the full path as file name but that didn't work either.

Answer 1

I suspect that your problem is due to a missing enviroment variable.

Let's start from here:

Under non-Windows operating systems the HOME environment variable is used if it exists, otherwise the path returned by the rootPath().

so, if you log in, you have the HOME variable correctly set and it works, but when you launch the program from init, you don't have it. Try to add

export HOME="/root"

to you init script