title: Adobe Acrobat Reader on CentOS 5 link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/adobe-acrobat-reader-on-centos-5/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 726 created: 2007/04/15 01:35:00 created_gmt: 2007/04/15 01:35:00 comment_status: open post_name: adobe-acrobat-reader-on-centos-5 status: publish post_type: post

Adobe Acrobat Reader on CentOS 5

CentOS 5 was released yesterday. Went over to my favorite mirror last night and used Bittorrent to download the DVD. Got working on installing it on our Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop this morning, mostly because under previous versions of RedHat Enterprise/CentOS important stuff like hibernation never worked right — something you really need on a low end laptop like this, since even running the most agressive power saving settings under Windows you only get 2 hours on the battery.

Used the upgrade option, something I’ve only ever trusted Red Hat to get right. For the most part things went smoothly. I did have to reinstall ndiswrapper (allows use of Windows wireless card drivers on Linux) because of the new kernel. I also had to reconfigure VMWare for the same reason. The post-install updates were pretty extensive for a new release, but at least half the upgraded packages were for 3rd party apps I’d originally installed from RPMForge.

Surprisingly, the most aggravating bump in the road was Adobe Acrobat Reader. With CentOS 4, I’d been using the latest version (7.0.9) installed from the rpm package without incident. After installing CentOS 5 it acroread just stopped working. Reinstalling the package from tar.gz, I found that acroread returned a “expr: syntax error” ad infinitum. Googling around, I found a bunch of references to this from Fedora 6 users, but surprisingly nothing at all on the Red Hat Knowledgebase. The answer came in a series of questions and replies around a post in the Adobe user forum from Gaurav Khurana:

A workaround to run acroread on Fedora Core 6 is to edit the file &lt ReaderRoot&gt/bin/acroread and replace the following line (line-no 644):

check_gtk_ver_and_set_lib_path “$MIN_GTK_VERSION”

with

check_gtk_ver_and_set_lib_path “$MIN_GTK_VERSION”

That post was dated December 21, 2006.

The complete solution is to edit the acroread script by:

1. Adding “export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim” to the top; and
2. Commenting line 644 (beginning “check_gtk_ver …”)

You’ve got to wonder why both Adobe and RedHat have failed to publish so much as a notification since then — let alone a patch. It’s not like we won’t notice eventually. I pity the poor admin that does a mass upgrade of his orgs Red Hat workstations and discovers this problem the hard way, first thing the Monday morning after.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo