[SOLVED] Adobe Reader 9 crash on print dialog

ljb643 · 07-30-2010, 07:51 PM

Has anyone else seen this? Adobe Reader 9.3.3 on Slackware 13.1 (32 bit). This is the stand-alone reader, not the browser plugin. The Reader crashes the second time I open the print dialog. Even if I cancel, and do not actually print. For example: Open a PDF, File=>Print, Cancel, File=>Print. Then the Reader window is gone, with no message anywhere I can find.

yooy · 07-31-2010, 09:17 AM

Do other programs print well, like xpdf?

Mark Pettit · 07-31-2010, 02:23 PM

Do you have a particularly good reason why you prefer to run a closed proprietary program like Adobe Reader ?

Is there some feature that it offers that the open-source viewers/readers don't have ?

If you look at any of the security/vulnerabilities sites you will see that Adobe Reader is not exactly considered the most secure and safe software going. Even on GNU/Linux.

ljb643 · 07-31-2010, 07:14 PM

Yes, other programs work, including xpdf. But this isn't relevant to the question. I just wanted to know if anyone else has seen this issue with Adobe Reader on Slackware, before taking this to an Adobe forum or something like that. I've also tried the same Adobe Reader, same PC, on Xubuntu 10.04 and it does not crash. So this seems to a be Slackware-specific.

x-alien · 08-01-2010, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ljb643

Has anyone else seen this? Adobe Reader 9.3.3 on Slackware 13.1 (32 bit). This is the stand-alone reader, not the browser plugin. The Reader crashes the second time I open the print dialog. Even if I cancel, and do not actually print. For example: Open a PDF, File=>Print, Cancel, File=>Print. Then the Reader window is gone, with no message anywhere I can find.

I can confirm this problem.

Adobe Reader 9.3.3 - Slackware 13.1 32 bit.

No message from the console.

ljb643 · 08-01-2010, 04:32 PM

Thanks for confirming this. I was able to get it to say "Segmentation fault", and create a core file, but got nothing useful out of it. I will probably try posting this on the Adobe forum, and will report back if there is any resolution.

x-alien · 08-28-2010, 05:07 PM

It seems that the problem is CUPS 1.4.4, recently updated by Pat (security fix).
CUPS 1.4.4 also crashes Firefox and Thunderbird when you access the print panel:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=617026

The downgrade to CUPS 1.4.3 fixes all these problems ... but opens a security hole ...

ljb643 · 08-28-2010, 06:25 PM

Thanks! I confirmed that Adobe Reader crashes with CUPS-1.4.4 and does not crash with CUPS-1.4.3. Reading the bug report you linked to, it doesn't sound really like a CUPS problem, but a more CUPS usage problem. If it is something for Adobe to fix, I'm not hopeful. It has been reported on their forum, and I will add a comment about CUPS.

willysr · 08-28-2010, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by x-alien

It seems that the problem is CUPS 1.4.4, recently updated by Pat (security fix).
CUPS 1.4.4 also crashes Firefox and Thunderbird when you access the print panel:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=617026

The downgrade to CUPS 1.4.3 fixes all these problems ... but opens a security hole ...

I used Mozilla binary for Firefox and i don't have this problem

willysr · 08-28-2010, 06:46 PM

there's also a patch to fix this problem: https://bugzillafiles.novell.org/att....cgi?id=371760

Richard Cranium · 08-28-2010, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Pettit

Do you have a particularly good reason why you prefer to run a closed proprietary program like Adobe Reader ?

Is there some feature that it offers that the open-source viewers/readers don't have ?

I've noticed that neither Evince nor Okular correctly render my resume (both display all of the text in bold). xpdf, on the other hand, does render the document correctly.

I'm running 64 bit Slackware, so I don't know how well Adobe Reader displays it under Linux. The Windows version, however, does display things correctly.

rworkman · 08-28-2010, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium

I've noticed that neither Evince nor Okular correctly render my resume (both display all of the text in bold). xpdf, on the other hand, does render the document correctly.

I'm running 64 bit Slackware, so I don't know how well Adobe Reader displays it under Linux. The Windows version, however, does display things correctly.

Wow, that's surprising (to me). I've been using evince since I moved to x86_64, and I've yet to run across a pdf that it didn't display correctly. Don't you just hate those corner cases? :-)

MadMaverick9 · 08-28-2010, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Pettit

Do you have a particularly good reason why you prefer to run a closed proprietary program like Adobe Reader ?

Is there some feature that it offers that the open-source viewers/readers don't have ?

Well - one reason I found is PDF Forms: xpdf doesn't do it all. evince and okular sort of work, but vertical alignment is off (filled in text is moved down several pixels). Only Adobe Reader does it correctly.

Richard Cranium · 08-29-2010, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rworkman

Wow, that's surprising (to me). I've been using evince since I moved to x86_64, and I've yet to run across a pdf that it didn't display correctly. Don't you just hate those corner cases? :-)

Well, it's every pdf generated by Docbook tools or the XML Resume stylesheets. That's a lot of corner cases. :-)

Here's one: the sendmail operations and configuration document. On my machine, that document looks much different using evince than it does using xpdf.

rworkman · 08-29-2010, 04:44 PM

Hehe. In that case, maybe I just don't look at a lot of pdf documents. My corners are smaller than yours :-)