[SOLVED] How to use googler on Debian? results are always "no results"

keithostertag · 11-25-2021, 08:38 PM

I'm using Debian 10 (buster). I used my apt package manager to install the program "googler", but when I run it I never get any results. So I am wondering if I have some type of setup problem with my system?

I am not seeing anything in the manpages to indicate what I might be doing wrong. I've tried several of the examples in the manpage with the same "no results".

I should add that I get the same results when attempting to run ddgr.

Code:

keith@ada:~$ googler -d hello world
[DEBUG] googler version 3.7.1
[DEBUG] Python version 3.7.3
[DEBUG] Connecting to new host www.google.com
[DEBUG] Fetching URL /search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hello+world
[DEBUG] Cookie: 1P_JAR=2021-11-26-02
[DEBUG] Response body written to '/tmp/googler-response-rf_b0j8d'.
No results.

From the man page:

Code:

GOOGLER(1)                       User Commands                     GOOGLER(1)

NAME
       googler - Google from the command-line

SYNOPSIS
       googler [OPTIONS] [KEYWORD [KEYWORD ...]]

DESCRIPTION
       googler  is  a command-line tool to search Google (Web & News) from the terminal. Google site search works too. googler shows  the  title,  URL
and text context for each result. Results are fetched in pages. Next or previous page navigation is possible using keyboard shortcuts.  Results are indexed and a result URL can be opened in a browser using the index number. There is no configuration file as aliases serve the  same  purpose  for  this  utility.  Supports sequential searches in a single instance.

ondoho · 11-25-2021, 11:44 PM

An 'apt-cache show googler' on Debian 10 says the software comes from here: https://github.com/jarun/googler
I recommend reading the documentation.
BUT - Even if the github repo has been updated fairly recently, the version in Debian 10 repos probably hasn't.
Google are very good at preventing this kind of non-standard usage of their services, and are shifting their APIs around all the time.
Just like youtube-dl, this type of software requires constant maintenance & updating.

Just in case there's another reason why this isn't working: How are you connecting to google resp. the internet? VPN? TOR? Can you search Google normally with your browser?

shruggy · 11-26-2021, 02:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

Google are very good at preventing this kind of non-standard usage of their services, and are shifting their APIs around all the time.
Just like youtube-dl, this type of software requires constant maintenance & updating.

^This. googler 3.7.1 is quite old. I'm getting similar results with googler 4.2 on CentOS 8:

Code:

$ googler -d hello world
[DEBUG] googler version 4.2
[DEBUG] Python version 3.6.8
[DEBUG] Platform: Linux-4.18.0-348.2.1.el8_5.x86_64-x86_64-with-centos-8.5.2111
The latest release of googler is v4.3.2, please upgrade.
[DEBUG] Connecting to proxy server localhost:8118
[DEBUG] Tunnelling to host www.google.com
[DEBUG] Opened socket to 127.0.0.1:8118
[DEBUG] Fetching URL /search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hello+world&sei=JQlJwk6OEeyfJgAZmb2hBg
[DEBUG] Cookie: CONSENT=PENDING+395
[DEBUG] Response body written to '/dev/shm/googler-response-921jqxfr.html'.
No results.
If you believe this is a bug, please review https://git.io/googler-no-results before submitting a bug report.

See https://git.io/googler-no-results mentioned in the last line.

BTW, /dev/shm/googler-response-921jqxfr.html shows the privacy policy message from Google with "Click here to agree", after which come the search results for "hello world". The name of the cookie in my case, CONSENT=PENDING+395, is telling as well.

OTOH, ddgr 1.9 works just fine there.

Update. To prove the point, I've just rebuilt googler 4.3.2 from Fedora Rawhide source RPM, and lo and behold, it works.

keithostertag · 11-26-2021, 08:41 PM

Thank you shruggy and ondoho. Indeed, the problem was that the Debian repository versions of both googler and ddgr were both old. I downloaded the latest stable release of each and they are now both working. And thank you for the additional details.

I will mark this thread resolved.