[natty] xpdf segfaults on start-up

[Gavin McCullagh]

Binary package hint: xpdf

When I start xpdf from the command line against a host of different files I get back:

Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/arabic' (/etc/xpdf/includes:6)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/cyrillic' (/etc/xpdf/includes:7)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/greek' (/etc/xpdf/includes:8)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/hebrew' (/etc/xpdf/includes:9)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/latin2' (/etc/xpdf/includes:10)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/thai' (/etc/xpdf/includes:11)
Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/usr/share/xpdf/turkish' (/etc/xpdf/includes:12)
***** MediaBox = ll:0,0 ur:595.22,842
***** CropBox = ll:0,0 ur:595.22,842
***** Rotate = 0
Segmentation fault

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: xpdf 3.02-12ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-9.43-generic 2.6.38.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-9-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed May 25 22:16:07 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_IE:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_IE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xpdf
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-01 (23 days ago)

[Alex Engelmann (alex-engelmann)]

Same here. The program will run until I open a document, at which point I get a segmentation fault.

alex@alex-Lemur-UltraThin:~$ xpdf
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-times-bold-i-normal--20-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-times-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Segmentation fault
alex@alex-Lemur-UltraThin:~$

Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit

[glennric (glennric)]

This seems like a rather serious bug. The application is completely unusable as it is intended to be used. That is to open pdf documents. Someone really needs to notice this bug and fix it. In the mean time I have compiled a version with poppler disabled for myself so that I can at least use xpdf. Although without poppler documents don't look very good.

[Dan Drake (ddrake)]

On my Natty install, I get:

Error: Couldn't find included config file: '/etc/xpdf/includes' (/etc/xpdf/xpdfrc:115)

and my /etc/xpdf/xpdfrc has, around line 115:

# Include additional character maps (these are provided by the
# poppler-data package). The /etc/xpdf/includes file is automatically
# kept up to date by the package scripts. See the file itself for
# more details.
include /etc/xpdf/includes

The "includes" file doesn't exist, so it's not being kept up-to-date by poppler-data. Commenting out the "include" line doesn't work, nor does creating an empty /etc/xpdf/includes.

[Dan Drake (ddrake)]

Reinstalling poppler-data (as in the Debian bug) did regenerated /etc/xpdf/includes, but xpdf still segfaults for me. I'm attaching an strace; I hope it helps.

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

debian bug #610441 is already fixed in the git repo (see control file). you can grab that commit to fix this.

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

whoever is in charge of ubuntu pulls, this is fixed in version 3.02-14, which is now in debian unstable. please sync your ubuntu packages from that. thanks.

[bill purvis (bill-billp)]

Can someone translet comment #6 into words that an idiot like me can understand. It seems to imply a fix, but
I have no idea what a git repo is or which control file he's referring to?

(Sorry to be so dumb, but I would like to use xpdf sometimes)

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

download the source:

apt-get source xpdf

look at the vcs-browser entry in the control file:

gedit xpdf-*/debian/control

but this is all moot since whoever is in charge of syncing from debian can just do that, and a bunch of bugs will be fixed including this one.

[Paul Vojta (vojta-8)]

I find that if I use the Debian xpdf package (version 3.02-21), the problem persists.

However, if I use the Debian libpoppler13 package (version 0.16.7-2) (together with the required libopenjpeg2, also from Debian), then both Debian and Ubuntu xpdf work.

So maybe one should view this as a libpoppler bug.

(Note: I'm not entirely sure that some of the above comments actually refer to the actual bug being reported. The bug being reported is not the problem with the include files, it's the segmentation fault.)

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

yes, its a poppler, bug, but it only affects xpdf. given that, i think its fine for it to stay here since people running into the problem can find the solution here rather than reporting yet another bug about this...

[sergioroa (s-roa)]

why isn't there yet any package update for Ubuntu 11.04 that fixes this bug? thanks

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

because it was fixed in preparation for 11.10 well after 11.04 was released. now, there are some updates for older releases, but someone needs volunteer to do the work to prepare a fix. that simply hasn't happened here. i assume everyone that would be capable of that has upgraded to 11.10 anyway where it isn't a problem.