2

I am making use of PDFTK to watermark PDF files using the following command:

pdftk /tmp/55180af7c8c88.pdf stamp /tmp/stamp55180af7c95b84.58412952.pdf output /tmp/55180af7c95c81.06110501.pdf

However the above results in:

Error: Failed to open output file:
   /tmp/55180af7c95c81.06110501.pdf
   No output created.
Error: unable to open file for output: /tmp/55180af7c95c81.06110501.pdf

The above is a strange error because PDFTK should be creating that output file!

If I put sudo infront of the command, no error is thrown. But I am writing to the tmp folder and this is writeable by all I thought?

I am running PDFTK from PHP's exec command. To be 100% sure that this isn't a permissions issue, I made the /tmp folder owner and group to be www-data, which is the apache user but the same error is thrown.

I now have no idea what is going on, I appreciate any help!

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    What is output of this command, please, ls -ld /tmp /tmp/55180af7c95c81.06110501.pdf
    – Chris Davies
    Mar 29, 2015 at 19:18

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

You should not be fiddling around with the permissions for /tmp. It's an important part of the system. I suspect that the reason your pdftk command is failing is because /tmp is incorrectly set up. To restore the permissions on tmp run the following commands as root:

chown root:root /tmp
chmod 1777 /tmp

The result will leave the permissions and owner/group of /tmp looking like this:

ls -ld /tmp
drwxrwxrwt 6 root root 12288 Mar 29 18:05 /tmp

Based on further investigation, I suspect that now we have got /tmp sorted out, the reason that the pdftk is failing is that the output file already exists but is not writeable by the application. (Awaiting update via comments.)

Improve this answer
2
  • This was the state of permissions in the first place. I have changed it back. But this doesn't solve the initial problem.
    – Abs
    Mar 29, 2015 at 18:30
  • Maybe not, but at least /tmp is now in a sane state.
    – Chris Davies
    Mar 29, 2015 at 19:12
0

Have you got selinux enabled? Have a look at this previous question and answer, please.

I am editing this after your kind comment about SELinux/AppArmor not being relevant. If I were you, and this a long shot, I would take a look at the filesystem you are using for /tmp. If it is not tmpfs and it is get close to be full, you may experience issues similar to the one you describe. As you are probably aware of, once a filesystem gets close to be full, it only allows root to write on it.

Again, hope it helps!

Improve this answer
1
  • I used sestatus to check if is selniux is enabled but it is disabled. In addition, apparmor is enabled but it's just the basic setup and it isn't blocking pdftk as it isn't in any of the profiles.
    – Abs
    Apr 4, 2015 at 18:07

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .