Updating Ghostscript on CentOS 5.2 (ghostscript 8.63)

PLEASE NOTE: I have posted an update for CentOS5.4 and GhostScript 8.70!

Today I needed a newer version of ghostscript on my server pool for some back-end processing we do. Updating ghostscript for RHEL5 / CentOS 5.2 turned out to be a pain! I was nearly stucked into RPM hell!

   **** Warning:  An error occurred while reading an XREF table.
   **** The file has been damaged.  This may have been caused
   **** by a problem while converting or transfering the file.
   **** Ghostscript will attempt to recover the data.
ERROR: /undefined in /BXlevel
Operand stack:
   7   0   1   --dict:6/6(ro)(G)--   obj
Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   %loop_continue   --nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1119/1686(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:107/200(L)--   --dict:104/127(ro)(G)--   --dict:241/347(ro)(G)--   --dict:18/24(L)--
Current allocation mode is local
ESP Ghostscript 815.02: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

A few google-searches later I realized that ghostscript 8.15 is “old school” and needed a serious update. I always like to have the latest software (generally speaking) so I was after the latest version to date (version 8.63) to hopefully solve some problems with PDF translation:

First, you’ll need the jasper libraries which are not available via yum. You can get them here (i386 32bit only for now):

rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/jasper-libs-1.900.1-8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/jasper-1.900.1-8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/jasper-utils-1.900.1-8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/jasper-devel-1.900.1-8.i386.rpm

Next, here are the RPMs for RHEL5/CentOS5.2 for Ghostscript (i386 32bit only for now):

rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/ghostscript-8.63-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/ghostscript-devel-8.63-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://chrisschuld.com/centos52/ghostscript-gtk-8.63-1.i386.rpm

*** Problem solved!

PLEASE NOTE: I have posted an update for CentOS5.4 and GhostScript 8.70!