[GPL GS WORKS] MASTER gs-esp crashes system when asking for unknown font

[Persio]

Binary package hint: gs-esp

The new gs-esp package in Feisty (8.15.4.dfsg.1-0ubuntu1) eats up all system resources when asked to load a missing font. Here is a short example:

$ gs
GS>\SomeBogusFontName findfont
Can't find (or can't open) font file /usr/share/gs-esp/8.15/Resource/Font/SomeBogusFontName.
Can't find (or can't open) font file SomeBogusFontName.
Querying operating system for font files...

After this, the system becomes instable and the swap use goes through the roof. And then it freezes completely.

System information:
Linux xxxxx 2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 07:36:31 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you try whether this works with gs-gpl?

Do

sudo apt-get install gs-gpl

and then start "gs-gpl" instead of "gs" on the command line and do the same test.

[Persio (persiobarros)]

Here it goes:

$gs-gpl
GPL Ghostscript 8.54 (2006-05-17)
Copyright (C) 2006 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
GS>/AAAA findfont
Can't find (or can't open) font file /usr/share/gs-gpl/8.54/Resource/Font/AAAA.
Can't find (or can't open) font file AAAA.
Querying operating system for font files...
Didn't find this font on the system!
Substituting font Courier for AAAA.
Loading NimbusMonL-Regu font from /var/lib/defoma/gs.d/dirs/fonts/n022003l.pfb... 2606724 1055610 1825016 536135 1 done.
GS<1>

I think this is the correct behavior.

[Persio (persiobarros)]

I think this a pretty serious bug. Simply previewing a malformed postscript file or sending it to a non postscript printer can crash the system. I came into this when trying to load a eps file with a non installed font declaration in gimp.
How can I tell the system to use gs-gpl instead of gs-esp?

[Micah Cowan (micahcowan)]

Hello Persio. Assuming you've done "sudo apt-get install gs-gpl", just follow it up with "sudo update-alternatives --set gs /usr/bin/gs-gpl", and that should do it.

[Persio (persiobarros)]

Micah, thank you very much for your advise. It seems to be working now.

[VladBlanton (vblanton)]

Bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gs-esp/+bug/75894
appears to be a duplicate of this one. same old story of gs-esp causing memory leak and gs-gpl working.

[Dominik Holler (dominik-holler)]

thumbnails in nautilus are effected, too

[VladBlanton (vblanton)]

Has the fix been pushed to the repos yet? Many people are still posting bug reports on this after the "fix" was "released"

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

The fix is in the repositories for Gutsy, the development of Ubuntu 7.10. A backport for Feisty is planned.

[Brandon Applegate (vom)]

It seems even after installing gs-gpl and running update-alternatives that CUPS still uses gs-esp. Is there an extra step to get CUPS to full embrace gs-gpl ?