open-pdf-studio fails to lauch on linux

[rumia-dec]

Brief Description

Open PDF Studio fails to launch on Linux across all packaging formats (Snap, .deb, AppImage).

• Snap version: Crashes with GLib-GIO portal error and SIGSEGV (Segmentation Fault)
• .deb and AppImage versions: Crash with PDFium initialization error: libpdfium.so: cannot open shared object file

The root cause appears to be missing PDFium library in all Linux builds, with Snap having additional sandbox permission issues.

---

Environment

OS: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble)
Kernel: 6.17.0-1025-oem
Architecture: amd64
Snap: 2.75.2+ubuntu24.04
Open PDF Studio versions tested:
  - Snap: 1.47.13
  - .deb: 1.67.0 (from release)
  - AppImage: 1.67.0 (from release)
Display Server: Wayland

---

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Open PDF Studio using any Linux method:

   Snap:

   sudo snap install open-pdf-studio
   open-pdf-studio /path/to/file.pdf

   .deb:

   sudo dpkg -i open-pdf-studio.deb
   open-pdf-studio /path/to/file.pdf

   AppImage:

   chmod +x Open.PDF.Studio_1.67.0_amd64.AppImage
   ./Open.PDF.Studio_1.67.0_amd64.AppImage /path/to/file.pdf

2. Observe the application crashes immediately with different errors depending on the package format.

---

Actual Errors

Snap Version - Segmentation Fault:

(process:XXXXX): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: XX:XX:XX.XXX: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.NotAllowed: This call is not available inside the sandbox
fish: Job 1, 'open-pdf-studio ...' terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

.deb and AppImage Versions - PDFium Missing:

thread 'main' panicked at /home/runner/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tauri-2.11.2/src/app.rs:1417:11:
Failed to setup app: error encountered during setup hook: PDFium initialisation failed: Failed to load PDFium DLL from "/usr/lib/Open PDF Studio": LoadLibraryError(
    DlOpen {
        source: "/usr/lib/Open PDF Studio/libpdfium.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory",
    },
)

Full backtrace (AppImage):

stack backtrace:
   0: __rustc::rust_begin_unwind
   1: core::panicking::panic_fmt
   2: tauri::app::App<R>::make_run_event_loop_callback::{{closure}}
   3: tauri_runtime_wry::handle_event_loop
   4: tauri_runtime_wry::make_event_handler::{{closure}}
   5: tao::platform_impl::platform::event_loop::EventLoop<T>::run_return
   6: tao::platform_impl::platform::event_loop::EventLoop<T>::run
   7: <tauri_runtime_wry::Wry<T> as tauri_runtime::Runtime<T>>::run
   8: tauri::app::Builder<R>::run
   9: app_lib::run
  10: open_pdf_studio::main

---

What I've Tried

Attempt	Result
Connect Snap home interface	❌ Still Segmentation Fault
Connect Snap removable-media interface	❌ Still Segmentation Fault
Run Snap with --devmode	❌ Still Segmentation Fault
Copy files to /tmp or ~/snap/ directories	❌ Still Segmentation Fault
Install official .deb package	❌ PDFium missing
Run AppImage version	❌ PDFium missing
Install libpoppler-dev as alternative	❌ Incompatible
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1	✅ Got full backtrace

Conclusion:

• Snap: The application cannot access D-Bus/Portal APIs inside the sandbox, resulting in Segmentation Fault. Even with all permissions granted and --devmode, it still crashes.
• .deb/AppImage: The PDFium library (libpdfium.so) is missing from all Linux distributions, making the application completely unusable.

The issue is in the Linux packaging/bundling process, requiring attention to both Snap sandbox permissions and PDFium library bundling.

[DutchSailor]

Thanks for this issue. Current week there is a feature freeze and I wil be working on this one!

[DutchSailor]

Fixed on main (f6c922b + 74b90de).

Root cause: libpdfium.so was never bundled on Linux — only the Windows pdfium.dll was committed. Production rendering uses in-proc PDFium, so init_pdfium failed and a fatal ? aborted startup right after compile. That is why the app compiled but would not run / the AppImage would not start.

Fixes:

• Bundle libpdfium.so next to the binary via a new src-tauri/tauri.linux.conf.json (resources). The committed binaries/linux-x64/libpdfium.so is not referenced by the Windows config, so Windows is untouched.
• Resilient PDFium init — no longer a hard abort when a render path is momentarily unavailable.
• Serialize in-proc PDFium calls to eliminate a heap-corruption crash under concurrent rendering (tests/pdfium_concurrency.rs covers it).

Verified: the AppImage builds on a clean Ubuntu 24.04 and renders a real page through the bundled libpdfium.so. Full build + run steps and a test protocol are in docs/linux-build-fixes.md and docs/linux-test-protocol.md.

This lands in the next Linux dev build. Please reopen if it still fails on your distro (include the terminal output).