Incompatibility with Java 17/21. Error: org.jruby.exceptions.SystemCallError: (EBADF) Bad file descriptor - /usr/bin/gs

[lealceldeiro]

asciidoctorj-pdf not working with Java 17/21.

I'm trying to use asciidoctorj-pdf along with the Maven Plugin, and while it works with Java 11, it does not when I switch to Java 17 or 21.

I'm getting the following error:

Execution generate-pdf-doc of goal org.asciidoctor:asciidoctor-maven-plugin:3.1.1:process-asciidoc failed: org.jruby.exceptions.SystemCallError: (EBADF) Bad file descriptor - /usr/bin/gs

As follows, my pom.xml file. This one works perfectly well with Java 11, but fail with Java 21 (for example)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.lealceldeiro</groupId>
  <artifactId>docs</artifactId>
  <version>4.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <maven.compiler.source>21</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>21</maven.compiler.target>
    <java.version>21</java.version>

    <asciidoctor.maven.plugin.version>3.1.1</asciidoctor.maven.plugin.version>
    <asciidoctorj.pdf.version>2.3.19</asciidoctorj.pdf.version>
    <asciidoctorj.version>3.0.0</asciidoctorj.version>
    <jruby.version>9.4.9.0</jruby.version>
    
    <!-- Use version 1.0.1 with Java 11, use 2.0.0 with Java 21-->
    <asciidoc-extensions.version>2.0.0</asciidoc-extensions.version>
  </properties>


  <build>
    <!-- Docs: https://docs.asciidoctor.org/maven-tools/latest/-->
    <defaultGoal>compile</defaultGoal>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.asciidoctor</groupId>
        <artifactId>asciidoctor-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>${asciidoctor.maven.plugin.version}</version>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>org.asciidoctor</groupId>
            <artifactId>asciidoctorj-pdf</artifactId>
            <version>${asciidoctorj.pdf.version}</version>
          </dependency>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jruby</groupId>
            <artifactId>jruby</artifactId>
            <version>${jruby.version}</version>
          </dependency>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>org.asciidoctor</groupId>
            <artifactId>asciidoctorj</artifactId>
            <version>${asciidoctorj.version}</version>
          </dependency>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>com.lealceldeiro</groupId>
            <artifactId>asciidoc-extensions</artifactId>
            <version>${asciidoc-extensions.version}</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
        <configuration>
          <sourceDirectory>src/main/resources</sourceDirectory>
          <!-- Attributes common to all output formats -->
          <attributes>
            <imagesdir>assets/images</imagesdir>
            <pdf-fontsdir>src/main/resources/assets/font</pdf-fontsdir>
            <pdf-theme>src/main/resources/my-theme.yml</pdf-theme>
            <sourcedir>${project.build.sourceDirectory}</sourcedir>
          </attributes>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>generate-pdf-doc</id>
            <phase>generate-resources</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>process-asciidoc</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <backend>pdf</backend>
              <attributes>
                <source-highlighter>rouge</source-highlighter>
              </attributes>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

I'm using Java 21 (17 fails too, while 11 is OK), running on Ubuntu 24 LTS and Maven 3.9.9.

I'm assuming the issue is related to asciidoctorj-pdf because
mvn asciidoctor:process-asciidoc builds and generates the resources (HTML) without issues, but
mvn process-resources (custom execution config bind to use pdf as the backend) is failing.

For reference, this is the same issue reported at asciidoctor/asciidoctor-maven-examples#141

[lealceldeiro]

In case it helps, the same set up (with Java 21) works flawlessly in a GitHub runner (Ubuntu latest). But it fails in my local, as mentioned before.

[abelsromero]

I can reproduce it in a simple project with only PDF (no extensions) and it fails in 17, 21 and 23, but not 11. Now it'd be interesting to know why it works in CI, @lealceldeiro are you also enabling optimization or compression in CI? And can you share the version of Ghostcripts you are using locally and in CI? Mine is 10.04.0 (2024-09-18).

Running mvn -X shows the error happens when calling Ghostscript using Ruby's Open3 when optimizing the PDF (I added :optimize: to a doc)

Caused by: org.jruby.exceptions.SystemCallError: (EBADF) Bad file descriptor - /usr/bin/gs
    at org.jruby.RubyProcess.spawn (org/jruby/RubyProcess.java:1779)
    at org.jruby.RubyKernel.spawn (org/jruby/RubyKernel.java:1951)
    at RUBY.popen_run (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:222)
    at RUBY.popen3 (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:103)
    at RUBY.capture3 (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:290)
    at RUBY.run (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:22)
    at RUBY.render (uri:classloader:/gems/rghost-0.9.7/lib/rghost/ruby_ghost_engine.rb:83)
    at RUBY.to (uri:classloader:/gems/rghost-0.9.7/lib/rghost/convert.rb:36)
    at RUBY.optimize_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:79)
    at RUBY.create (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/tmpdir.rb:147)
    at RUBY.optimize_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:62)
    at RUBY.write (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/converter.rb:4644)
    at RUBY.write (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/document.rb:989)
    at RUBY.convert (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:124)
    at RUBY.convert_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:190)
    at org.jruby.RubyIO.open (org/jruby/RubyIO.java:1197)
    at RUBY.convert_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:190)

Debugging, the command that is trying to run is this, and it works fine from console (even with the rghost gem inclusion which is in the jar)

/usr/bin/gs \
 -dNOPAUSE \
 -dBATCH \
 -dQUIET \
 -dNOPAGEPROMPT \
 -Iuri:classloader:/gems/rghost-0.9.7/lib/rghost/ps \
 -dPDFSETTINGS=/default \
 -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
 -dCannotEmbedFontPolicy=/Warning \
 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
 -dNEWPDF=false \
 -dPrinted=false \
 -sstdout=/tmp/asciidoctor-pdf-20250103-83815-r4uc0p.pdf.rgerr \
 -sOutputFile=/tmp/asciidoctor-pdf-20250103-83815-r4uc0p.pdf \
 /home/.../asciidoctor-maven-examples/asciidoctor-pdf-example/target/generated-docs/example-manual.pdf

I don't see any other useful output (the file in the command shows only warnings) , but I'll try tomorrow to make a simpler reproducer isolating the Ruby call (from https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf/blob/v2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb#L79C10-L79C103). I am not convinced it's a Ghostcript version thing, so at least with that we could report upstream.

[lealceldeiro]

Hey @abelsromero , I'll check for more info tomorrow.
For now I've checked the Ghostcripts versions and, in local I'm using 10.02.1.
On CI, the build shows 9.55.0

[lealceldeiro]

Some more info:

I have set both attributes in my .adoc:

:optimize: screen
:compress:

However, even if I remove both :optimize: screen and :compress:, I also get in my local

Caused by: org.jruby.exceptions.SystemCallError: (EBADF) Bad file descriptor - /usr/bin/gs
    at org.jruby.RubyProcess.spawn (org/jruby/RubyProcess.java:1779)
    at org.jruby.RubyKernel.spawn (org/jruby/RubyKernel.java:1951)
    at RUBY.popen_run (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:222)
    at RUBY.popen3 (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:103)
    at RUBY.capture3 (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/open3.rb:290)
    at RUBY.run (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:22)
    at RUBY.render (uri:classloader:/gems/rghost-0.9.7/lib/rghost/ruby_ghost_engine.rb:83)
    at RUBY.to (uri:classloader:/gems/rghost-0.9.7/lib/rghost/convert.rb:36)
    at RUBY.optimize_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:79)
    at RUBY.create (uri:classloader:/META-INF/jruby.home/lib/ruby/stdlib/tmpdir.rb:147)
    at RUBY.optimize_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/optimizer.rb:62)
    at RUBY.write (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-pdf-2.3.19/lib/asciidoctor/pdf/converter.rb:4644)
    at RUBY.write (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/document.rb:989)
    at RUBY.convert (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:124)
    at RUBY.convert_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:190)
    at org.jruby.RubyIO.open (org/jruby/RubyIO.java:1197)
    at RUBY.convert_file (uri:classloader:/gems/asciidoctor-2.0.23/lib/asciidoctor/convert.rb:190)

I've removed any other "exotic" attributes from the doc, but I keep getting the same error.

---

On CI, where the pdf is generated successfully, these are some of the props from the pdf file, in case it helps anyhow:

Producer: GPL Ghostscript 9.55.0
Format: PDF-1.4
Optimized: No (even though I've set :optimize: screen 🤔 )
Security: No
Paper Size: A4, Portrait (8.27 × 11.69 inch)
Contains Javascript: No

[abelsromero]

However, even if I remove both :optimize: screen and :compress:, I also get in my local

Can you provide a reproducer for that? Because I am pretty sure GS is only used for optimization.
If I uninstall GS and run without optimize it works fine in all Java versions, if I add the attribute while uninstalled it I get a clear message

Ghostscript not found in your system environment (linux).
Install it and set the variable RGhost::Config::GS[:path] with the executable.
Example: RGhost::Config::GS[:path]='/path/to/my/gs' #unix-style
RGhost::Config::GS[:path]="C:\\gs\\bin\\gswin32c.exe"  #windows-style

[lealceldeiro]

Hey @abelsromero , you're right!
I had another document with :optimize: screen.

After I removed it from that other .adoc then it worked with Java 21.

Now, the question is: is it anything related to the GS version? - on CI with GS 9.55.0 it does work; while in my local with 10.02.1 it doesn't.

I'll try to test it in my local later today with a different version of GS.

[abelsromero]

I created a simple reproducer and reported to JRuby isolating the call to Open3.
I can confirm it's a general issue not related to ghostcript because it also fails calling ls. But I also saw it runs in GitHub Actions. I admit I am not sure what's going on.

@lealceldeiro can you give it a try also and confirm it also fails in your machine? https://github.com/abelsromero/jruby-open3-test/

[lealceldeiro]

@abelsromero , I can confirm it also fails in my machine.

Thanks for putting this together and reporting the issue in JRuby!