Reading encrypted/password protected pdf on Linux

2011-07-13
it
#adobe, #bcfp, #brocade, #encryption, #evince, #exam, #foxit, #foxitreader, #it, #learning, #linux, #pdf, #pdftotext, #red, #hat, #rhel, #rhel6, #san, #storage, #network, #study, #material

The problematic PDF

The CFP300 material on http://community.brocade.com/docs/DOC-2041 is encrypted so that it cannot be printed/re-edited without a password.

If you try to open this with evince (default .pdf viewer in Gnome) it will ask for a password. pdftotext (comes with the software suite poppler) says:

Error: Weird encryption info Error: Incorrect password

It's only the material starting with M0* that has this issue, this has also been seen with other documents. Maybe this is because they were created with a too new version of Adobe Acrobat that evince/pdftotext doesn't support. The rest of the material are going to be public and they are user/admin guides anyway. But the M0* files are from the actual course material for the 16G so this is why.

The solution on RHEL6 x64: install FoxitReader. Download the .rpm - then hit 'rpm -Uvh FoxitReader-1.1-0.fc9.i386.rpm' and it will be installed. To start it just hit 'FoxitReader'.

Anyway I think it's nice of Brocade to pre-release the course material for those doing the beta-test. If you want the real material the cheapest is 650$ and then you get the material, narration of the pdfs (usually good quality, not just reading off the presentations) and a few quite good lab exercises.

The Studying

Just threading along here with the material, slowly but steady. I'm starting with the NPIV / Access Gateway stuff. It's a bit more complicated than just a switch that isn't its own domain, it's also mapping the virtual WWN to the N_ports (a switch in AG mode has N_ports that connect to F_ports in another switch). Usually N_ports are on hosts' and targets' ports and the switches' has the F_ports.