How to solve "pdftk: Bad CPU type in executable" on Mac?

Question

I want to use pdftk but I always get this error zsh: bad CPU type in executable: pdftk I reinstalled pdftk and I changed the terminal from bsh to zsh as I found in my search for how to solve this error but without any success. I'm using the latest MacOS version "Catalina v10.15.4"

Sunshade

Answer 1

This version of pdftk works on macOS Catalina (10.15).

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

The link on the website is not up to date. That means by clicking the download button on the website you get an old version.

Fibriform

Works on Big Sur (OSX 11) on M1 as well! – Milicent

This "WHY" moment brought to you by the internet – Quadruplet

This works (Big Sur on Intel). Sent email to author, asking him to fix link. – Armington

Works on Monterey on M1 too – Discreet

Confirm, works on M1 without any extra effort, just run the "pdftk" command as usual. – Lauryn

Work Perfectly on macOs Big Sur Version 11.6 by just installing the Packeg. Thanks Men. – Galloon

Just to note now, this version is pretty out of date, and was throwing exception when trying to fill data into a PDF of mine. The version installed from homebrew as per gatorback's answer is 3.3.3 (and fixes the exceptions I was receiving) – Georgiannageorgianne

Works on my M3 MacBook Air – Nonlegal

Answer 2

Homebrew:

brew install pdftk-java

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pdftk-java

Compatible with Catalina, Big Sur

Puccoon

pdftk-java can't decrypt some common format – Millimeter

This is correct way of doing in 2023 – Imprinting

Note this is a Java port and is not the original pdftk. As such there may be bugs, known differences, and be feature incomplete or have additional features. – Lavernlaverna

This is also worked in Mac monterey OS. – Finale

Answer 3

Following Ben's answer, here is a bash script that search for the latest available PDFTK version from their website:

#!/bin/bash

PDFTK_VERSION="2.02"
MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_START="10"
MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_END="12"
MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_START="0"
MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_END="20"
DOWNLOAD_URL="https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-PDFTK_VERSION-mac_osx-MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR.MACOS_VERSION_MINOR-setup.pkg"

# Check if we want debug mode or not
if [[ "$1" == "debug" ]]; then
    DEBUG="YES"
fi

# Function that check if a file exist with curl
check_url_exist() {
    http_code=$( curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --fail -w '%{http_code}' "$1" 2>/dev/null )
    if [[ "$http_code" == "200" ]]; then
        echo "YES"
    else
        echo "NO"
    fi
}

echo "INFO - Searching for PDFTK version $PDFTK_VERSION, from MacOS version $MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_START.$MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_START to $MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_END.$MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_END."

# Search for available versions
MAJOR="$MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_START"
while [ $MAJOR -le $MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR_END ]; do
    MINOR="$MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_START"
    while [ $MINOR -le $MACOS_VERSION_MINOR_END ]; do
        THIS_DOWNLOAD_URL=$( echo "$DOWNLOAD_URL" | sed -e "s|PDFTK_VERSION|$PDFTK_VERSION|g" | sed -e "s|MACOS_VERSION_MAJOR|$MAJOR|g" | sed -e "s|MACOS_VERSION_MINOR|$MINOR|g" )
        if [[ $( check_url_exist "$THIS_DOWNLOAD_URL" ) == "YES" ]]; then
            echo "FOUND     - Found version ! PDFTK:$PDFTK_VERSION, MacOS:$MAJOR.$MINOR. URL: $THIS_DOWNLOAD_URL"
        elif [[ "$DEBUG" == "YES" ]]; then
            echo "NOT FOUND - PDFTK:$PDFTK_VERSION, MacOS:$MAJOR.$MINOR. URL: $THIS_DOWNLOAD_URL"
        fi
        MINOR=$(( MINOR + 1))
        sleep 0.2
    done
    MAJOR=$(( MAJOR + 1))
done

And the result, at the date of 2022-10-15, is :

$ bash ./download_pdftk_mac.sh
INFO      - Searching for PDFTK version 2.02, from MacOS version 10.0 to 12.20.
FOUND     - Found version ! PDFTK:2.02, MacOS:10.6. URL: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg
FOUND     - Found version ! PDFTK:2.02, MacOS:10.11. URL: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

Rilke

Answer 4

As a preliminary solution, I was successful in installing the Intel version of homebrew in /usr/local (in parallel to the M1 version in /opt/homebrew) using Apple's Rosetta 2 layer. The Intel packages (homebrew formulae) seem to work without any problem on the Apple M1 architecture. Both pdftk and pandoc work even without prefixing 'arch -x86_64' (e.g., the command 'pandoc sample.md -o sample.html' as in the example linked below).

Commands:

arch -x86_64 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
alias ibrew='arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew'
ibrew analytics off
ibrew install pdftk-java
ibrew install pandoc

Further information:

• Homebrew on Apple Silicon
• Install Homebrew with Rosetta
• Main thread

Wills

You can just install the package mentioned in Ben's answer, no extra hacks needed on M1. – Lauryn

Yes, as a workaround I had also mentioned it here. But it seems to be an old version (2.02). Now homebrew directly supports the M1 chip ("Apple Silicon"), with pdftk-java version 3.3.2, which I consider the better solution: formulae.brew.sh/formula/pdftk-java#default – Wills

I still get the error pdftk  ✔  took 8s  at 08:05:51 PM zsh: bad CPU type in executable: pdftk – Acknowledgment

If the Apple Silicon variant supported by https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pdftk-java doesn't work, the forum at https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk/-/issues might be the right place to ask for support. In my case it's working fine: pdftk-java: stable 3.3.2 (bottled). – Wills

Answer 5

Using masOS 13.3.1:

brew install pdftk-java
brew link pdftk-java

Make sure you have java installed

Snaffle