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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T20:23:29+00:00

I am using a Linux Server and am trying to install Pdftk, but I

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I am using a Linux Server and am trying to install Pdftk, but I am problems trying to figure out what exactly to do.

I found the following documentation on how to install it, but they refer mostly to installing it on the local Windows machine.

They are:
http://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2009/07/29/installing-pdftk-php/

http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/#packages

Can someone help me unserstand exactly what files I need to place where on my server so I can refer to pdftk?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Pdftk is a version of iText which has been converted from Java to c++ and rebuilt with a command-line bridge for easy access from PHP applications.

    To build pdftk on Redhat / CentOS please follow the below instructions.

    ssh [server to install pdftk on]

    Now that we are in the server we need to create the directories to store pdftk.

    cd /
sudo mkdir extra
cd extra
sudo mkdir src
cd src
sudo wget http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/pdftk-1.41.tar.gz
sudo tar zxvf pdftk-1.41.tar.gz
cd pdftk-1.41/pdftk

    Now we need to install the gcj libraries.

    sudo yum install java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-devel.i386

    The gcc-c++ library doesn’t get installed with the gcj package so we will install it now, so we don’t get an error halfway through the compile process.

    sudo yum install gcc-c++

    If you compile the application right now you will receive a warning that tmpnam is dangerous to use and you should use mkstemp.

    sudo vi report.cc

    Run this from inside VI to do a search and replace for the tmpnam method.

    :%s/tmpnam(/mkstemp(/g

    Press escape and save the changes with

    :wq!

    Now that we have all the packages installed, we are going to start compiling pdftk-1.41

    from /extra/src/pdftk-1.41/pdftk run the following command

    sudo make -f Makefile.RedHat

    This will kick off the build process for compiling and converting the java file to c++. This could take SEVERAL minutes to convert iText to c++. Go grab yourself a margarita from our new margarita machine in the break room :).

    Now with the pdftk file created we will want to copy it to the /bin directory so that we can run it from anywhere.

    sudo cp pdftk /usr/local/bin

    Let’s make sure the build was successful and run

    pdftk --version
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