PDFtk Server Install Workaround for Mac OS X

gistfile1.md

Installing PDFtk Server edittion on your Mac

This workaround install is necessary because PDFtk was pulled from homebrew-cask due to issues with it aggressively overwriting file permissions that could impact other installed libraries. See this homebrew-cask issue.

The following steps worked on Mac OS X 10.10.1 with a standard brew installation for the PDFtk Mac OS X server libary version 2.02.

All Terminal commands separated by a full line space. Some commands wrap into multiple lines.

Download and extract the Mac OS X server install pacakge

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg

pkgutil --expand ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg ~/Downloads/pdftk_package

Now create directories for where it would go with a proper brew install.

*NOTE: I had no prior install of PDFtk via brew-cask when doing this. Not sure how having multiple versions installed might affect brew link and these instructions.

cd ~ && mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

Here are the individual directories being created above (assume being in cd ~ directory).

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

Give the Payload file the proper gzip file extension and unzip it

mv ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/Payload ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

gunzip ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

Use cpio to unarchive the resulting file

cd ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/ && cpio -iv < ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload && cd ~

Move the relevant extracted files to their appropriate locations within the Cellar/pdftk directory

cd ~ && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/ && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

Or the individual file moves (assume being in cd ~ directory)

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

Create the appropriate symlinks through brew

brew doctor

and most likely then

brew link pdftk

http://stackoverflow.com/a/33248310/1303068

This installation routine still messes up permissions on /usr/local on macOS 10.12.5, as described in homebrew-cask #7707.

I was trying to follow this procedure on my macOS 10.13 - High Sierra but when trying to execute a command, pdftk was hanging out doing apparently nothing. If verbose mode, it was stuck in Creating Output .... I found this stackoverflow topic, where it suggested to download the latest version still not listed on the official website) : https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

So replace the first command with the following one and it will be okay:

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

how to unistall this thing from mac ?

@abhinav098 brew uninstall pdftk ?

Thank you for
download the latest version still not listed on the official website) : https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

Worked perfectly for me.

+1 for @rosco link

+1 for @rosco link

+1 for @rosco link

+1 for @rosco link

Huge props for writing this up for us. Thanks!

For OSX Mojave (10.14), just substitute the URL in the curl command with this one: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg.

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg && \
pkgutil --expand ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg ~/Downloads/pdftk_package && \
cd ~ && \
mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02 \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man \
      /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1 && \
mv ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/Payload ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz && \
gunzip ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz && \
cd ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/ && \
   cpio -iv < ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload && \
cd ~ && \
   mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk && \
   mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/ && \
   mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1 && \
brew doctor
brew link pdftk

@jthomerson thanks!

Work fine for me!

I'm getting the error "zsh: bad CPU type in executable: pdftk" in MacOS Catalina. Anyone else facing a similar issue?

@nachiket yes unfortunately we have the same challenge with Catalina.

Same here. -bash: /usr/local/bin/pdftk: Bad CPU type in executable

I also had this Bad CPU type in executable error. Then I picked this package:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg
installed it, and it works fine. (picked this URL here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58236185/284595 )

The official PDFtk Server page (as of 16 Nov 2019) offers this link as the Mac OS installer:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg

Perfect, it works like a charm now. Thanks @kurmanka.

I also had this Bad CPU type in executable error. Then I picked this package:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg
installed it, and it works fine. (picked this URL here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58236185/284595 )

The official PDFtk Server page (as of 16 Nov 2019) offers this link as the Mac OS installer:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg

Thank you!!!

thank you!

I also had this Bad CPU type in executable error. Then I picked this package:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg
installed it, and it works fine. (picked this URL here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58236185/284595 )

The official PDFtk Server page (as of 16 Nov 2019) offers this link as the Mac OS installer:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg

As of January 29, 2020, the official PDFtk Server page still has the old 10.6 link . . .

Thanks for this gists, this also work and be carefull to install 10.11 pkg

this also worked on my OSX Catalina, maybe you need to do reintall

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turforlag/homebrew-cervezas/master/pdftk.rb

This owrked for me prefectly, I also hac it installed so

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

Version of pdftk running on macOS Big Sur (= macOS 11) with the Apple M1 chip:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/414272/bad-cpu-type-in-executable-when-running-pdftk/420712#420712

Using the pdftk-java port with homebrew on the Apple M1 architecture:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60859527/how-to-solve-pdftk-bad-cpu-type-in-executable-on-mac/67561373#67561373

For OSX BigSur (11.6.4), just substitute the URL in the curl command with this one: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg.

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

pkgutil --expand ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg ~/Downloads/pdftk_package

cd ~ && \ mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02 \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

mv ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/Payload ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

gunzip ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

cd ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/

cpio -iv < ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload

cd ~

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

brew doctor

brew link pdftk

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

This worked for me on an M1 mac. Seems like if you attempt to do a brew install pdftk the recommendation from homebrew is to use the pdftk-java

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

This worked for me on an M1 mac. Seems like if you attempt to do a brew install pdftk the recommendation from homebrew is to use the pdftk-java

Can double that. M1 and brew install pdftk-java works.