[Slackbuilds-users] Repair a corrupted .pdf

[thinkunix]

Rich Shepard wrote:
> I have a .pdf file 2,981,542 bytes in size created in 2012 that will not
> open using mupdf or xpdf:
> $ xpdf exploration-summary-rpt.pdf Syntax Error: Couldn't read xref table
> Syntax Warning: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref 
> table...
> Syntax Error: Couldn't find trailer dictionary
> Syntax Error: Couldn't read xref table

You could also try pdftk.  I've used pdftk-2.02 with success on older
versions of Slackware.  It is in SBo and it usually fixes the xref table
error.  I can't speak to the SBo 15.0 version as I'm not running it.

$ pdftk bad_in.pdf output good_out.pdf

Note that "output" is literally a pdftk keyword.
That command make take some time to run, especially on a large file.