burst aborts with null pointer exception

[Jesusfreak]

Trying to split a newspaper which comes as pdf with "pdftk 2012-03-14_SaeZ-DD.pdf burst" aborts with a null pointer exception. The output is:

Unhandled Java Exception:
Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at gnu.gcj.runtime.NameFinder.lookup(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.stackTraceString(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: pdftk 1.44-3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-17.30-generic 3.0.22
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-17-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Apr 3 13:31:06 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pdftk
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-02-08 (54 days ago)

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

Thanks for your bug report!

Your pdf seems not to be 100% standard-conform (or there is a bug in ghostscripts 9.05)
because it reports:

   **** Warning: considering '0000000000 XXXXX n' as a free entry.
   ...
   **** This file had errors that were repaired or ignored.
   **** The file was produced by:
   **** >>>> Mac OS X 10.6.8 Quartz PDFContext <<<<
   **** Please notify the author of the software that produced this
   **** file that it does not conform to Adobe's published PDF
   **** specification.

Anyway, pdftk should not crash. I will have a look at the problem.

Strangely, the following line which emulates the the burst command for the pdf with 24 pages seems to work without any problem:

for i in $(seq -f "%04.0f" 24) ; do pdftk 2012-03-14_SaeZ-DD.pdf cat $i output pg_$i.pdf ; done

[Rupert Levene (levene)]

Here is a much smaller pdf file (also produced by Mac OS X 10.6.8 Quartz PDFContext) that seems to elicit the same behaviour from pdftk:

$ pdftk test.pdf burst
Unhandled Java Exception:
Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at gnu.gcj.runtime.NameFinder.lookup(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.VMThrowable.getStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.stackTraceString(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)
   at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.12)

On the other hand, gs doesn't appear to think anything is wrong with it:

$ gs -o nul -sDEVICE=nullpage test.pdf
GPL Ghostscript 9.05 (2012-02-08)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Processing pages 1 through 1.
Page 1

Version information:

$ apt-cache policy pdftk ghostscript
pdftk:
  Installed: 1.44-4build1
  Candidate: 1.44-4build1
  Version table:
 *** 1.44-4build1 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
ghostscript:
  Installed: 9.05~dfsg-0ubuntu4.2
  Candidate: 9.05~dfsg-0ubuntu4.2
  Version table:
 *** 9.05~dfsg-0ubuntu4.2 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     9.05~dfsg-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

pdftk 2.01 handles both pdf files in this bug report without any problem. Therefore I close this report.
Thanks for reporting the issues!