Bug 104502 - I/O errors during checkheader() cause hang
Summary: I/O errors during checkheader() cause hang
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: poppler
Classification: Unclassified
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium minor
Assignee: poppler-bugs
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Reported: 2018-01-05 14:57 UTC by Ben Timby
Modified: 2018-03-22 20:13 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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i915 platform:
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Attachments
Check return code of getChar(), abort reading on error. (616 bytes, patch)
2018-01-05 14:57 UTC, Ben Timby
Details | Splinter Review

Description Ben Timby 2018-01-05 14:57:41 UTC
Created attachment 136569 [details] [review]
Check return code of getChar(), abort reading on error.

Hi, I ran into an issue when using pdftotext on files stored on a CIFS mount. A problem with the CIFS server was causing EIO to be returned for read() calls. It takes about 1 minute for EIO to be returned, blocking each read() for about 1 minute before it fails.

This caused pdftotext to run for around 16 hours before finally failing. I tracked this down to PDFDoc::checkHeader(), which attempts to read 1024 chars using FileStream::getChar() into a buffer. It uses this buffer for file type detection.

The problem is that it does not check the return code of getChar(). getChar() returns EOF in response to the EIO, but that EOF is just placed into the buffer, and another read() is attempted (1024 times) making the process block in uninterruptible sleep for 16 hours or so.

The fix is to check this return code and stop reading. I am attaching a patch.
Comment 1 Albert Astals Cid 2018-01-07 12:08:20 UTC
Patch looks reasonable, after all we're not doing really much in that function.

But it only makes failing faster right? I mean you can't really see the file either because your CIFS server is broken, no?
Comment 2 Ben Timby 2018-01-07 21:00:02 UTC
Right, this just avoids 1023 additional reads that will fail. After this function returns the next read fails and pdftotext exits.
Comment 3 Albert Astals Cid 2018-01-08 22:43:05 UTC
Pushed, thanks :)
Comment 4 Jakub Wilk 2018-03-07 12:55:45 UTC
For very small PDF files, EOF will be reached when reading the header.
This patch causes spurious warnings when reading such (valid) files.
Comment 5 Albert Astals Cid 2018-03-09 21:53:06 UTC
So open a new bug and attach a patch?


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