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Sunday, July 16, 2017

acroread on Linux 6

As per https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013:1402 : Adobe Reader (acroread) allows users to view and print documents in Portable Document Format (PDF). Adobe Reader 9 reached the end of its support cycle on June 26, 2013, and will not receive any more security updates. Future versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader will not be available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Some of our ERPs still use acroread for pasta printing.  When we did the upgrade of OS to OEL 6, we had to reinstall adobe by getting the rpm from adobe site ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/ that I got from https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2hsgq6/linux_version_of_adobe_reader_no_longer/   Fortunately, adobe still hosts it. It is also available from Red Hat if you have a subscription:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6

SRPM
x86_64
acroread-9.5.5-1.el6_4.1.i686.rpmSHA-256: ac0934cfe887c6f49238ebff2c963adc33c1531019660bbfa4f8852d725136a2Download
acroread-plugin-9.5.5-1.el6_4.1.i686.rpmSHA-256: 8116e41e4825f74478731a7e970482274db5c9d4b9489b9f70ca4e1a278e526bDownload
i386
acroread-9.5.5-1.el6_4.1.i686.rpmSHA-256: ac0934cfe887c6f49238ebff2c963adc33c1531019660bbfa4f8852d725136a2Download
acroread-plugin-9.5.5-1.el6_4.1.i686.rpmSHA-256: 8116e41e4825f74478731a7e970482274db5c9d4b9489b9f70ca4e1a278e526bDownload

After installing the rpm with rpm -ivh AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm command, we got dependency error for libxml2.so.  On installing libxml2.so, we got error for other missing dependencies.  So eventually we did yum install AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm which installed about 80 rpms that acroread needs to function.

After installation, we kept getting this error:

dirname: missing operand

The post on http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/error-message-dirname-missing-operand-when-starting-acroread-827012/ recommended a fix:

The issue was fixed by commenting line 529 in the bash script /opt/Adobe/Reader/bin/acrobat

529 #  [ -n "${MozPath}" ] || mozillaPath="`readlink "$MozPath" | xargs dirname`"

The DBAs were getting this error when they used sudo to login as applmgr:

Adobe Reader does not need to be run as a privileged user. Please remove 'sudo' from the beginning of the command

The post on https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/17345/ recommended that we comment line 331,332,333 and 334:

# Do not allow launch using 'sudo'.
#if [ "${ACRO_ALLOW_SUDO+set}" != "set" -a \( "${SUDO_USER+set}" = "set" -o "${SUDO_UID+set}" = "set" -o "${SUDO_GID}" = "set" \) ]; then
# printf "%s\n" "Adobe Reader does not need to be run as a privileged user. Please remove 'sudo' from the beginning of the command."
# exit 1
#fi

That fixed the sudo issue.

I have asked the DBA team to reach out to the Developers to stop using acroread and migrate to an alternative that is natively supported in Linux.  Here's more from Red Hat on their security advisory https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013:1402 :

Red Hat advises users to reconsider further use of Adobe Reader for Linux,
as it may contain known, unpatched security issues. Alternative PDF
rendering software, such as Evince and KPDF (part of the kdegraphics
package) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, or Evince and Okular (part of the
kdegraphics package) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, should be
considered. These packages will continue to receive security fixes.
Red Hat will no longer provide security updates to these packages and
recommends that customers not use this application on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux effective immediately.

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