[TIKA-1132] Parsing some XLS documents hangs entire JVM, requires kill -9

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.2, 1.3
• Fix Version/s: 1.5
• Component/s: parser

Environment

Linux Suse:
java version "1.7.0"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-b147)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)

OSX 10.8.3:
java version "1.7.0_06"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_06-b24)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)

• Assignee: Tim Allison
• Reporter: Ryan Krueger
• Created: 10/Jun/13 22:43
• Updated: 25/Mar/14 16:21
• Resolved: 26/Sep/13 23:36

Description

Some XLS documents hang the entire JVM. A control-C or regular kill won't stop the JVM, a kill -9 is required.

We're running within an email server application parsing documents to extract text of all attachments. When we hit a message with the affected attachment the entire JVM hangs and we mark the message to skip extracting the text from the affected message the next attempt. Unfortunately, it kills all email processing on the server until the internal watchdogs kill -9 the application.

We have seen the issue for several months with different documents, but they are always Excel files. Some get complaints from Excel when opening but not all.

In addition to experiencing the problem on our Linux servers I have tested on OSX and experienced the same problems. I ran the Tika UI and select the affected file or run the CLI. The problem is the same.
Tested with java -jar /path/to/tika-app-1.3.jar -t /path/to/file.xls

When running on multi-CPU machines there are two threads running at 100% every time.

I have attached a document that triggers the error.

I have tested with 1.2 and 1.3 with the same result. Running 1.1 the text is accurately extracted.