Bug 250660 – acroread locks up X when it starts

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE

[Description Laszlo Valko 2008-12-12 01:36:11 UTC]

Upon starting acroread for the first time the desktop will become unresponsive
to clicks for about 25 seconds on a P4.

See reports:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=375551
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4e4e9

The bug is in acroread, should be fixed by Adobe.

Till that, Gentoo should implement a workaround similar to this:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=375551#c8

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Assuming no instances of acroread are running (e.g. no acroread browser plugins
or processes)
1. As root issue the following:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

As a regular user run the following
2. Start a terminal and run
top -d 0.5
3. Start acroread

Actual Results:  
Updates (e.g. top updates) stop happening. Desktop is unresponsive,
mouse pointer still moves but clicking on other windows does nothing until
acroread has finished loading.

Expected Results:  
Updates to the desktop to continue happening. To be able to click on other
programs and use the desktop as acroread is loading.

Portage 2.1.4.5 (default-linux/x86/2007.0/server, gcc-3.4.6, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.25-hardened-r10 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.25-hardened-r10 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
Timestamp of tree: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:36:01 +0000
app-shells/bash:     3.2_p33
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7-r1, 2.1.6
dev-lang/python:     2.5.2-r7
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.2
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1-r2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.61-r2
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1-r1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.26
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.23-r3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
CBUILD="i586-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/bind"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php4/ext-active/ /etc/php/apache2
-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php4/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php4/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild 
/etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/ http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo/"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/vmware"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X Xaw3d aac acl acpi alsa apache2 berkdb bluetooth browserplugin bzip2 bzlib caps cgi cli cracklib crypt ctype cups curl dri dvd dvdr encode esd ethereal exif fbcon flac ftp gd gdbm gif gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 hash iconv imagemagick imap irda isdnlog java jce jpeg ldap ldapsam loop-aes mad maildir maildrop mailwrapper memlimit midi mikmod mime mmap mmx motif mozilla mp3 mysql mysqli ncurses nls no-helper nptl nptlonly nsplugin oav ogg opengl openmp pam pcmcia pcntl pcre perl php png pppd procmail quotas readline reflection samba sasl sdl session slang snmp soap sockets socks5 spl sse ssl suexec sysvipc tcltk tcpd tiff true
type unicode usb vorbis win32codecs wmf x86 xml xml2 xmlreader xmlwriter xorg xpm xsl xv zip zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic auth_digest authn_anon authn_dbd authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock dbd deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation proxy proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_http rewrite setenvif so speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" APACHE2_MPMS="prefork" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="i810 i830 fglrx radeon"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Comment 1 Panagiotis Christopoulos (RETIRED) 2008-12-14 18:16:27 UTC]

About which version of acroread in portage are you talking about?

[Comment 2 Laszlo Valko 2008-12-14 21:07:58 UTC]

The latest.

root@odon:~>equery list acroread
[ Searching for package 'acroread' in all categories among: ]
 * installed packages
[I--] [  ] app-text/acroread-8.1.3 (0)

[Comment 3 Raimar Sandner 2009-02-17 12:31:58 UTC]

This may be related:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=5d45fb1a062e66e3453efeb3c4a8dba1&p=6744781#post6744781

[Comment 4 Emmeran 2009-04-11 02:35:18 UTC]

I can confirm this bug with the latest version of acroread-8.x and with the new version 9.1.0.

[Comment 5 Timo Gurr (RETIRED) 2009-10-21 22:43:01 UTC]

I couldn't reproduce the problem on a quick check with 9.2, could you please verify?

[Comment 6 Laszlo Valko 2009-10-22 07:34:39 UTC]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I couldn't reproduce the problem on a quick check with 9.2, could you please
> verify?
> 

Well, i could reproduce. Unless Adobe removes the "feature" that we really don't want at all, this problem will not go away by itself.

Would you, please, change
ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=1
into
ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=0
in the ebuild?

Please?

[Comment 7 Timo Gurr (RETIRED) 2009-10-22 09:19:47 UTC]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Would you, please, change
> ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=1
> into
> ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=0
> in the ebuild?

ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=1 is set on purpose, please see bug #214800 for more details.

[Comment 8 Laszlo Valko 2009-10-22 09:34:20 UTC]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > Would you, please, change
> > ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=1
> > into
> > ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=0
> > in the ebuild?
> 
> ACRO_ENABLE_FONT_CONFIG=1 is set on purpose, please see bug #214800 for more
> details.
> 


Okay, then, please, create a 'use-flag' which lets me choose if I want asian fonts (=1) or a usable-X-display-for-that-50-seconds during startup (=0).
I really understand those poor people, who are simply not content with US-ASCII fonts, however, I'm just as much not content with not being able to use my computer every time I start acroread.

Of course, pushing the original bug upstream, and having Adobe fix their sh*t is the ultimate method, but, seeing how many YEARS it took for them so far to do nothing, does not make me expect anything soon.

[Comment 9 Andreas K. Hüttel 2012-01-31 22:01:15 UTC]

This is obsolete... current acroread (9.4.7) does not contain the asian fonts anymore, and the fontpack is only pulled in if you have the respective linguas set.