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Email: aardvark at saintaardvarkthecarpeted dot com

You win some, you lose some

Fri Jan 12 16:17:16 PST 2007

Solved a ghostscript problem at work yesterday; not a big deal in itself, but I'd always had this impression that GS crashes were dark, nasty, impenetrable things that I could not possibly understand. I mean, c'mahn, look at this error:

 $ ps2pdf report06w5060.ps
 Error: /invalidfont in findfont
 Operand stack:
    Fi   87   --nostringval--   55   45   --nostringval--   65   74
 74   111   74   83   46   65   65   83   83   83   83   120   46   2
 --nostringval--   4
 6   83   83   46   74   83   74   83   83   12   --nostringval--   92
 83   101   1   --nostringval--   101   120   1   --nostringval--   138
 4   --nostring
 val--   120   120   101   101   120   111   101   101   19
 --nostringval--   55   42   1   --nostringval--   83   2
 --nostringval--   55   35   --nostringv
 al--   83   83   2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   45   166.044
 Times-Italic   Font   Times-Italic   496086   Times-Italic
 --nostringval--   Times-It
 alic   NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal   (NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal)
 NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal   (NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal)
 NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal
 Execution stack:
    %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
 --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--
 --nostringval--   --nostringval--   f
 alse   1   %stopped_push   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop
 1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   .runexec2
 --nostringval--   --nostring
 val--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--
 --nostringval--   74   4   %oparray_pop   75   4   %oparray_pop
 --nostringval--   --nostringv
 al--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1
 %stopped_push   78   5   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--
 --nostringval--   --nostring
 val--   5   -1   1   --nostringval--   %for_neg_int_continue
 --nostringval--   --nostringval--
 Dictionary stack:
    --dict:1046/1123(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:75/200(L)--
 --dict:103/300(L)--   --dict:17/17(ro)(G)--
 --dict:1046/1123(ro)(G)--
 Current allocation mode is local
 Last OS error: 2
 Current file position is 95763
AFPL Ghostscript 8.00: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

Then, in desperation, I JFGI and found the problem: for some reason, the fonts had disappeared. This is an old install with lots of overlapping installs of everything, so it's hard to tell why it might've happened. However, it should just be a matter of either getting rid of the old install (rm /opt/bin/gs* (and yes, I know that's bogus)) or setting GS_FONTPATH and GS_LIB appropriately. (Or figuring out why they got borked…hm.)

OTOH, on the same machine I've got The Case Of The Missing Java:

 $ java
 There was an error trying to initialize the HPI library.
 Please check your installation, HotSpot does not work correctly
 when installed in the JDK 1.2 Solaris Production Release, or
 with any JDK 1.1.x release.
 Could not create the Java virtual machine.

instead of (same version of Solaris, too):

 $ java
 Usage: java [-options] class [args...]
            (to execute a class)
    or  java -jar [-options] jarfile [args...]
            (to execute a jar file)

which kind of worries me since its, like, Solaris and all, and java really should be working. Sigh.

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