Crashes all the time on ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException in libgcj.so.10

[Jakob Unterwurzacher]

==============
WORKAROUNDS
==============
1) Set LANG=C when launching pdftk, for example:
$ LANG=C pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf cat output out.pdf

-OR-

2) Install pdftk from Jaunty
http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41-3ubuntu1_i386.deb
http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41-3ubuntu1_amd64.deb

==============
BUG
==============
This seems to happen only if LANG=de_AT.UTF-8, but then it happens all the time.

$ pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf cat output out.pdf
Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 10
   at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.formatWithAttribute(libgcj.so.10)
   at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.format(libgcj.so.10)
   at java.text.DateFormat.format(libgcj.so.10)
   at com.lowagie.text.Document.addCreationDate(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfDocument.<init>(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfCopy.<init>(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Nov 25 01:48:00 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pdftk 1.41+dfsg-1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_AT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
SourcePackage: pdftk
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686

[Jakob Unterwurzacher (jakobunt)]

Confirming:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1311568
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/pdftk-macht-probleme/#post-2233465
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/problem-mit-pdftk-beheben/#post-2225258

[Jakob Unterwurzacher (jakobunt)]

Workaround: Install pdftk from Ubuntu Jaunty. This depends on libgcj9 instead of the buggy (?) libgcj10.

The Jaunty packages:
http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41-3ubuntu1_i386.deb
http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41-3ubuntu1_amd64.deb

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

It seems to me, that this bug only occurs with locale de_AT.UTF-8.
So a workaround would be setting the locale to C:
 LANG=C pdftk ...

If this does not work or other locales are affected too, please inform me.
The bug seems to be in libgcj10, not in pdftk or libitext.

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

The exception only occurs between April and December. It seems that the current month is used as an index to an array with 3 entries. With libgcj10-dbg installed, I get the following more verbose back trace:

Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 11
   at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.formatWithAttribute(SimpleDateFormat.java:793)
   at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.format(SimpleDateFormat.java:845)
   at java.text.DateFormat.format(DateFormat.java:419)
   at com.lowagie.text.Document.addCreationDate(itext-2.1.7.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfDocument.<init>(itext-2.1.7.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfStamperImp.<init>(itext-2.1.7.jar.so)

I tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the exception with an own written small java program calling SimpleDateFormat.format directly. The source code of SimpleDateFormat can be found in the gcc-4.4 source. At first view, everything seems fine there.

[Jakob Unterwurzacher (jakobunt)]

Attached: Debian's workaround patch, extracted from http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41+dfsg-6.debian.tar.gz .

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

1.41+dfsg-7 is in lucid