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Legacy Knowledge Base
Published Sep. 10, 2025

PDFBox Causing JVM Crashes

Written By

Brett Ripley

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This article describes an issue inherent in the PDFBox library that causes a JVM crash upon image conversion.

Resolution

  1. Due to this PDFBox library issue which is in operation by default within the Liferay Portal, one solution would be to switch to using ImageMagick instead of PDFBox. To do this, enable ImageMagick in the portal-ext.properties: 
    imagemagick.enabled=true
imagemagick.global.search.path=[Your ImageMagick Path]
    Keep in mind that you must install Ghostscript and Imagemagick. See Ghost Script and Image Magick for more information.
  2. Another solution would be to open a ticket with our Support team and request for the solution on LPS-37243.

Additional Information

If you’re unable to properly use ImageMagick, you may need to update to the latest version (ImageMagick 6.7.9-6 2012-09-25 Q16 or later). See LPS-30291 for information on efforts to identify incompatible application versions with Liferay Portal.

LPS-32257: PDFBOX 1.6 Cause Tomcat Crash on Big PDF Files.

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