# Basic command (replace input.pdf and output.pdf with your filenames) gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf Ghostscript reads the entire PDF, parses each page, and writes a fresh PDF. This often fixes broken cross‑references, missing fonts (by embedding them if they’re available on your system), and corrupted image streams.

# Simple repair qpdf --repair input.pdf repaired.pdf

# If you need to rebuild the cross‑reference table explicitly qpdf --linearize input.pdf linearized.pdf Same channels as Ghostscript (Homebrew, apt, dnf, or Windows binaries from https://qpdf.sourceforge.io/). 3.3. PDFtk Server (free command‑line version) If the PDF is only partially corrupted, you can split it into good pages and then re‑assemble.