PDFtk Server on OS X 10.11

Question

I've been using PDFTK Server on OSX pre 10.11 for over a year without any issues running commands on the command line.

After installing OSX 10.11 beta, I can no longer run any PDFTK Server commands on the command line. It does not throw any error, all the commands I try to execute just hang indefinitely.

I installed from a pkg I downloaded from the PDFTK Server website as always:

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/

I've also tried installing from source with Homebrew. The installation works, but I get the same results, the commands just hang in the terminal:

Homebrew tap

I've sent in the complaint to Apple via their Feedback Assistant application that gets installed when installing the beta two months ago without a response.

I've been told regarding the Apple Feedback Assistant:

You likely won't ever receive a response. Apple only replies through Feedback Assistant for major bugs of the operating system where they need additional information. It is not a way to obtain support, even less so for a third-party application.

I've also reached out to PDF Labs, the makers of the package, without response.

On MacPorts they're having an issue with the build on OS X 10.11, does this mean that there is a compatibility issue with PDFtk and 10.11 at the software level?

I've searched the web for a clue as to what might be causing the issue and how to fix it, but have found nothing tangible.

On OS X, I don't know how to go about figuring out if there is now a permission or path or even a Java issue after the upgrade.

Any help either trouble shooting the root cause or offering a fix is appreciated.

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UPDATE 1:

I heard back from Sid Steward at PDF Labs:

We have been wrestling with this almost as long as the beta has been out. We are still working on it. There appears to be an incompatibility with one of the (non-Apple) libraries that pdftk uses and OS X 10.11. Presently I am installing yet another update to Apple's developer tools with the hope that it will solve the problem. I will update you with our progress.

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UPDATE 2:

Sid Steward at PDF Labs again:

It looks like there are two threads running under pdftk, and that they are deadlocked. That means that each thread is waiting for the other to finish. I'm not an expert here, but that's my impression. Here is a screenshot from Mac's Activity Monitor to illustrate:

The above snapshot is from trying to run the pdftk binary currently on our site on OS X 10.11. The libgcj library noted above comes with pdftk, where the others are OS X libraries.

As I say, I just installed Xcode 7.0.1, which was released yesterday on the App store. I will now attempt to use these tools to build pdftk.

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UPDATE 3:

MacPorts is working the build issue with PDFtk, this is an update on that thread (Note: this is unrelated to PDFtk Labs):

This is due to the recompilation of libunwind in 10.11 using Apple Clang 7 producing new valid optimizations (according to Apple) that tickle an unknown bug in FSF boehm-gc.

​https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=66848

Don't expect any fixes from Apple as they can't touch the GPLv3 code to look at the FSF boehm-gc problem (unless they used the gcc43 package which should still be GPLv2). That this issue is triggered by the recompilation of libunwind is demonstrated by that fact that substituting the libunwind.dylib from 10.10 eliminates both the boehm-gc and gcj failures.

Note that is was filed as radr://21372179, "the FSF boehm-gc library built on 10.10 fails to pass its tests on 10.11" but closed as being an FSF boehm-gc bug.

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UPDATE 4:

MacPorts found a way to solve the build issue, this is an update on that thread

The attached Portfile.diff (when used with the proposed gcc5 update on #49227 which fixes gcj) solves the build issue with pdftk.

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UPDATE 5:

Sid Steward at PDF Labs has a successful build, his feedback:

A fix for MacPorts gcc5 allowed me to build a working pdftk that merges PDFs on El Capitan. The fix was added to the ticket you had posted to:

MacPorts

I will proceed to fully test this pdftk before packing it up into an installer. This process could take a couple days.

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Torritorricelli

Paid support might get you faster response from PDF Labs. – Blouse

homebrew is 25% of the way through a build. I'll let you know how it goes. – Blouse

Make any headway on the build @Blouse ? – Torritorricelli

I thought about PDF Labs paid support. If I get a response email, I'll try asking about it. – Torritorricelli

apologies for the delay. Two separate attempts to build on OS X El Capitan (GM and 10.11.1 beta) failed miserably (hung at one step in the compilation) – Blouse

Thank you for pursuing this issue ... hope it gets fixed soon ... my appreciation and thanks are extended to all who are working on it. – Countervail

Also having this issue. Tried disabling the new SIP to see if it helped, no such luck. – Reconstructive

Same issue here as well. Unfortunately I don't really have the skill set to troubleshoot this one. Fingers crossed that the PDF Labs folks make some headway – Glow

about update3: you can't easily substitute the files apple.stackexchange.com/questions/101328/… – Hieronymus

I managed to reboot in recovery mode, supressed system integrity by running csrutil disable in the terminal and replaced libunwind with yosemite version. – Hieronymus

Thanks for looking into this @Aaron. As far as tracking the pdftk deadlock issue, is the MacPorts ticket you've linked to the best place to check? Or does PDF labs have a bug tracker or forum of some sort discussing the progress on this issue? – Uniseptate

Great question @AlexWood. As far as I know, PDF labs is working the issue, but doesn't have a public bug tracker. If you find out otherwise, I'll update the main text accordingly. – Torritorricelli

Sid from PDF Labs just sent me this updated installer: pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/…. He said it should work on El Capitan - I'm testing it out right now. – Uniseptate

Sublime! This IS the solution, it works! @AlexWood, thank you very much for having followed the whole issue. Thanks Sid from PDF Labs. I was struggling around on applying the diff patch, but it didn't build correctly. Thanks again! – Party

I have tried that update but it failed with the following info. I try to do pdftk --version and i get the following: dyld: Symbol not found: __ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEED1Ev Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/pdftk Expected in: /usr/local/bin/../lib/libstdc++.6.dylib in /usr/local/bin/pdftk Trace/BPT trap: 5 – Lachesis

@Siva: there is a non-too good fix here: #34289731 ... basically add an extra export path command – Exodontics

pdftk runs fine on my osx 10.11 but when i run any pdftk command e.g. pdftk test.pdf dump_data_fields it just sits there doing nothing. has anyone ran into this? – Venipuncture

Answer 1

Thank you for your patience. I have successfully tested this pdftk installer and binary on OS X 10.11, El Capitan:

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

I will update our PDF Labs site soon to reflect this update.

If you already have pdftk installed from the old installer, this should install right on top of it without a problem -- it shouldn't be necessary to remove the old pdftk before installing this one.

Note that this installer/binary has not yet been tested on older versions of OS X.

Please let me know how this works for you.

I want to thank Aaron for opening this thread and for bringing helpful attention to the problem we were having with the build tools. I also want to thank the MacPorts team for their professional and timely work!

Antiquarian

is there a homebrew tap we can use to get this? – Estren

Thanks for making this available. It solved the issue I was having with pdftk. FWIW, two issues with your installer, first (minor) is that it isn't signed. The second is that it installs a link into /usr/share/man/man1. I'm actually slightly amazed that El Capitan's System Integrity Protection allows this, since I'd consider it a system directory. The right place to put the manual page link (to mirror the /usr/local/bin link for the executable) is /usr/local/share/man/man1. – Colorado

I am not sure why, but i try to install this update and i get the following issue :dyld: Symbol not found: __ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEED1Ev Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/pdftk Expected in: /usr/local/bin/../lib/libstdc++.6.dylib in /usr/local/bin/pdftk Trace/BPT trap: 5 – Lachesis

It should be noted that the pdftk homepage is not yet updated, so even if you have installed version 2.02 from the webpage, you will need to re-install it using the file in this answer. – Demott

The burst operation wasn't behaving as expected on my machine. It's OSX 10.11.1 running the pdftk installed from the .pkg I just downloaded from the official website pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/…. The website has't been updated yet. Overwriting the previous installation with the installer provided by Sid here solved my issue. – Indefinite

This is a great update! Can you update your website to include it? – Junitajunius

This version worked fine for me on El Capitan. Thanks Sid for keeping this great tool up-to-date! – Prophets

Doesn't work for me on OS X 10.11.2. Could you provide instructions for clean reinstall of pdftk? – Panarabism

Worked well for me on 10.11.2. Thanks! – Shevlo

on my El Capitan version (10.11.2) It installs, but complains "dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../lib/libiconv.2.dylib\n", " Referenced from: /opt/pdflabs/pdftk/lib/libgcj.16.dylib\n Reason: Incompatible library version: libgcj.16.dylib requires version 8.0.0 or later, but libiconv.2.dylib provides version 7.0.0. i'm nervous to upgrade this library as i know iconv is used by other stuff... – Devoe

@Devoe I'm having the same issue of missing libraries. Anybody have a fix, perhaps in the form of a necessary MacPort package? – Exodontics

I actually ended up using Ghostscript to do my pdf to text conversion. Don't have cmd to hand will update next week – Devoe

Thanks for the fix and responding to this thread. I downloaded PDFtk from your website today for OSX El Capitan and it hung just as described in this thread. The version reported by pdftk --version from the download was 2.02. I just downloaded the linked reference in this response also reporting version 2.02 and it did not hang. You might want to check the OSX version you're providing at pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server – Wrongdoing

As of right now it will not run with default security settings(to be expected). Source download and install instructions for OS X would be useful, something beyond a homebrew: the crutch of those too lazy to use sudo easy_install pip to install python packages the proper way; there is not a good excuse for having two versions of Python 2.7 for x86_64, but that is a story for a different day. – Cod

@sidsteward have you tested on macOS Sierra? – Torritorricelli

Hi, just wanted to add my voice to this chorus; I had the same problem with it hanging on El Capitan 10.11.6, and the new version from the link above did fix the problem. @sidsteward I'm very grateful as PDFtk is an incredibly useful tool. Thanks. – Pelican

This package resolved the problem for me on Sierra as well (10.12.4). Thank you. – Booking

it works on some files, but fails on files that have an owner password (but no user password). the same version on linux doesn't have this bug – Venipuncture

I faced the problem on 10.12.5 and this package resolved it. – Soffit

Just ran into the same problem - first downloaded the non-working verison from the homepage and then found the working one here. Please update the homepage :) – Prophets

Good news! Website still lists outdated one for 10.6. – Zwiebel

The website is still outdated 3 years on but this link just worked for me :) – Boresome

Works great for El Capitan! Could you update the website? – Ronrona

This also seems to work on Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Thank you! – Wife

This update works on my OSX 10.13.6 ! Thank you! And that would be really good if the website get updated – Lederhosen

Answer 2

Thanks to github.com/quantiverge, pdftk should be installable under brew. This one is tested in OSX Sierra.

Run the following in the terminal.

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turforlag/homebrew-cervezas/master/pdftk.rb

Updated with fixes from github.com/zph - thanks!

Pessimism

If going the Homebrew route, the above didn't fully work. Delete depends_on :macos => :lion and replace @tarball_path with the downloaded path. After the script crashed, the download should be in: $HOME/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/. After the adjustments it should work fine on High Sierra 10.13.6. – Paluas

Didn't work in catalina 10.15.7: 'brew extract' or 'brew create' and 'brew tap-new' to create a formula file in a tap on GitHub instead.: Invalid usage: Non-checksummed download of pdftk formula file from an arbitrary URL is unsupported! – Aztec

Answer 3

2020 Update

WORKED:

Please note that in order to install it on macOS High Sierra (10.13.5) or on Mac OS Catalina (10.15) (as mentioned by Ivan Kurmanov in the comments), I had to download the package from:

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

Of course, it won't let you install normally as it's not downloaded from "App Store" so use following instructions:

1. In the Finder, locate the app you want to open.

2. Don’t use Launchpad to do this. Launchpad doesn’t allow you to access the shortcut menu.

3. Control-click the app icon, then choose Open from the shortcut menu.

4. Click Open.

5. The app is saved as an exception to your security settings, and you can open it in the future by double-clicking it just as you can any registered app.

After that just go through the installation process, which is pretty much NEXT - NEXT and enjoy :)

DID NOT WORK:

The following brew command DID NOT work for me:

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turforlag/homebrew-cervezas/master/pdftk.rb

It gave following error:

Failure while executing; /usr/bin/xar -xf /xxxx/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/\#\{url_sha256\}--\* exited with 1.

Good luck!

Neoplatonism

The above link, pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/… seems to produce a working pdftk on Mac OS Catalina (10.15). – Wife

@IvanKurmanov thank you for the input, i will add it to the answer – Neoplatonism

Great!! This really saved me. i was close on giving up with the pdf_forms gem and look for another solution. – Satirist

2020-Dec-21 - confirmed this works, on macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina) 1. DL pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/… 2. Open Finder, use Ctl+click to open from shortcut menu (to bypass SIP) 3. Launch and follow a couple defaults when prompted ... Result: which pdftk -> /usr/local/bin/pdftk pdftk --version -> (2.0.2) FTW! – Philemol

Answer 4

Pdftk is currently not working for me on OSX Sierra.

If you have docker installed on your system, you can use my lightweight docker image instead:

$ docker run -v $(pwd):/files alpine-pdftk --help

Even better, simply use the following script as a drop in replacement:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/files jottr/alpine-pdftk "$@"

Now you can use pdftk as expected: ./pdftk --help

Undersea

@obh's answer worked for me in Sierra, but I appreciate having a docker solution too. Especially like the fact you used alpine :) – Volume

What if I want to run that image within a container, would I have to update the Dockerfile? – Neuroticism

Answer 5

work for me install the new one, https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

remove the old pdftk version; search the pdftk from the finder, move to trash and also have pdftk_uninstall.sh done.

$ pdftk -version

pdftk 2.02 a Handy Tool for Manipulating PDF Documents Copyright (c) 2003-13 Steward and Lee, LLC - Please Visit: www.pdftk.com This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions. There is NO warranty, not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Workhouse

in OS X Sierra pdftk gives dyld: Symbol not found: __ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEED1Ev Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/pdftk Expected in: /usr/local/bin/../lib/libstdc++.6.dylib in /usr/local/bin/pdftk – Aposiopesis

Answer 6

@Learner I fixed the recipe here: https://github.com/zph/homebrew-cervezas/blob/master/pdftk.rb and submitted a PR to the repo you linked.

Until that's merged, you can install as:

brew install https://github.com/zph/homebrew-cervezas/blob/master/pdftk.rb

Or if using Homebrew Bundler, add to your Brewfile:

tap 'zph/homebrew-cervezas'
brew 'pdftk'

Lovelovebird

Answer 7

Third Edit: The following are not fixes, but rather workarounds, (`cuz sometimes its not feasible to wait months for fixes to arrive).

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Second Edit: Coherent PDF Command Line Tools (aka cpdf) is free for noncommercial use, and can be licensed for commercial use. It provides functionality comparable to pdtk and (on my MacBook Pro at least) seems to run OK under El Capitan.

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Edit: This StackOverflow answer tells how to use ghostscript to concatenate files, thus providing (awkwardly) functionality similar to of "pdftk ... cat output out.pdf".

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For some purposes, the package ghostscript---which ships with LaTeX distributions like texlive---offers similar (but less user-friendly) capability to pdftk.

E.g., to extract pages 6-7 from a multipage pdf document:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER \
  -dFirstPage=6 -dLastPage=7 \
  "-sOutputFile="${EXTRACTED_FILENAME_HERE}" \
  "${SOURCE_FILENAME_HERE}" ;

The above worked for me ... your mileage may vary!

Needless to say, restoring pdftk to full functionality under El Capitan would be much better ... pdftk really is a terrific utility.

Countervail

Answer 8

Workarounds: We raised this to Sid back in August and he still has not fixed it so I think its fair to say that its a good idea to look for alternatives. Because of this, we have taken the initiative to submit a few first tools that people can enjoy for free in the following repository:

https://github.com/flexpaper/OSX-PDF-Toolkit

It contains easy to use scripts for CAT and BURST. We intend to add more tools going forward. Feel free to contribute

These new tools are using the native OSX libraries and no third party dependencies are needed whatsoever. Yay!

Edit: added info about this being a workaround

Incorporeity

You're more than welcome to submit those tools to the repository. It shouldn't be hard to add watermarking and concatenation with adding and removing at the same time. – Incorporeity

Answer 9

You can get to a running PDFTK Server under El Capitan if you use the manual of patching ports together with the four patches provided in Macports tickets #48528 and #49227.

The compilation of patched GCC5 took a long time on my machine. Also, it seems to be a good idea to name the local ports identically to the original ones (i.e. gcc5 and pdftk), otherwise you have to adjust the Portfiles.

It is also possible to bundle the resulting pdftk binary together with its dynamic libraries using install_name_tool on the binary and the dynamic libraries. I succeeded to run pdftk this way on two other machines.

Mckim

Answer 10

Updated status as of 2018-05-09:

1. It's not on brew standard sources
2. https://github.com/spl/homebrew-pdftk is unmaintained / deprecated
3. It is at https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/

Oenomel

Answer 11

Maybe it's time for annother update as of Autumn 2022:

AFIK the best maintained Homebrew cask formula to download, extract and manually install the binary build of pdftk 2.02 provided by Sid Steward in 2015 for OSX 10.11 compatibilty (which is still not publically announced) is the one from zph. brew install zph/cervezas/pdftk still works on recent OS and (using Rosetta 2) on ARM64.

However, in the meantime a plain Java fork/port of the original GPL sources were created that is actively maintained. This does no longer depend on the GCJ compiler and is called pdftk-java. While this depends on an jdk to be installed, the upstream homebrew provides again a regular formula for all supported OS and architectures. So a simple brew install pdftk-java should install a drop-in replacement of the original pdftk.

Katherinakatherine

(2023-06-14) pdftk-java is the simplest and best way to go! Thank you for your advice. – Permission

Answer 12

PDFtk-java

The original PDFtk Server code suffered from a dependency to the now defunct libgcj project. GCJ's was removed in GCC 7.1 and the project relied on an even older version.

The spiritual successor to the PDFtk Server code seems to be an open-source java-based implementation located at:

https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

or simply

brew install pdftk-java

Popcorn