#31 convert and gs security restrictions breaks pdfsandwich

[Tobias Frost]

(via Debian bug tracker: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1021975

Package: pdfsandwich
Version: 0.1.7-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Due to a change in permissions of GS for PDF files, pdfsandwich is unusable, as long as it relies on convert (imagemagick) which, in turns uses GS.

One gets this kind of errors :
identify-im6.q16: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy PDF' @ error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/421 and convert-im6.q16: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policyPDF' @ error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/421.

See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=907336#27 for a description of the kind of issue convert reports, unless one changes the security settnigs of GS.

It would apparently be better to make pdfsandwich rely on poppler-utils to perform the PDF to PBM image conversion, AFAIU.

Hope this helps.

and

It seems that the following script may be helpful, by wrapping calls to
convert, and using pdftoppm instead of convert for initial PDF opening :
https://gist.github.com/olberger/a88e3e2d4c684fdf94bbe5bc69ab9fe2

To be used with pdfsandwich -convert .../convert.sh

Hope this helps.

I think that maybe the original author should be notified, but as the
project used to live on sourceforge and seems a bit old, I'd let the
maintainer forward to the best channel.

Best regards,