[Solved] Recent update breaks all pdf readers for some files (suspect libpoppler73)

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1

[Advance apologies if my formatting of this post doesn't match forum standards - I'm new to this type of forum and I couldn't find a Review function to check it before posting]

A couple of days ago I noticed that opening some pdf files crashed atril and also okular, triggering bug reports. It happens on two systems with identical hardware and originally identical ubuntu-mate installations of 16.04 upgraded to 18.04. An example of such a file is at

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c090ab1e5274a0b64c8a2f4/S2-2018_G-VSKP.pdf

This seemed serious and I waited in the hope that a fix might appear but nothing has to date. Both atril and okular depend on the poppler library and looking in /var/log/dpkg.log I see

2018-12-05 15:02:46 upgrade libpoppler-glib8:i386 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.2 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.4
...
2018-12-05 15:02:46 upgrade libpoppler73:i386 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.2 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.4

xpdf also crashes and that only depends on libpoppler73, so as a working assumption I suspect a bug there and sought to downgrade the package but haven't found a way to do this. I have tried reinstalling libpoppler73 with no change.

I see that libpoppler-glib8:i386 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.4 depends exactly on libpoppler73:i386 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.4 so I'll have to replace both.

synaptic offers me a version 0.62.0-2ubuntu2 of libpopler73 if I use Package -> Force Version but that will remove a large number of packages which depend on it.

sudo apt-get install libpoppler-0.62.0-2ubuntu2
reports:
E: Unable to locate package libpoppler-0.62.0-2ubuntu2

Perhaps I have the syntax wrong?

Am I alone in this experience? I don't see anything in the ubuntu-mate launchpad

Any help appreciated

Chris

2

I can’t reproduce your issue. But I’m using 64-bit Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1.

Start with search of existing bug-reports on LaunchPad (here the bug 1803059 looks very interesting and related to your problem).
If this does not help, then consider to report new bug to LaunchPad.net by apport-bug libpoppler73 and following wizard in browser.

About downgrade of packages you should use the following syntax:

sudo apt-get install libpoppler-glib8=0.62.0-2ubuntu2.2 libpoppler73=0.62.0-2ubuntu2.2

and then hold these packages

sudo apt-mark hold libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler73
3

Thanks @Norbert_x for your reply. I’d looked at the ubuntu-mate launchpad rather than the more general ubuntu one.

I see the launchpad status now shows “Fix Released”, so hopefully an update will appear soon in the repositories.

Your example apt-get command returns a not-found error. Repeating with …ubuntu2 instead of …ubuntu2.2 (which is the package name I’d seen) results in another request to remove many many packages it seems because poppler-utils and libpoppler-qt5-1 depend exactly on version …ubuntu2.4.

Given a fix has been released, I will wait a while and/or go looking for it.

Chris

4

My Grandmother used to say “everything comes to he who waits…”

In the updates I received today new versions of poppler and friends were included, …ubuntu2.5 replaces …ubuntu2.4

I applied the updates and my test case pdf now renders ok in atril, okular and xpdf. Problem solved.

Chris

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