Youtube-dl failing to download on Flidas
Youtube-dl has always worked reliably on my Flidas systems. But in the last few days I noticed it failing to download videos from YT.
Here's the terminal output:
strypey@Bishop:~$ youtube-dl https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8
[generic] watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: Requesting header
WARNING: Could not send HEAD request to https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable
[generic] watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to download webpage: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable (caused by HTTPError()); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
strypey@Bishop:~$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8
[youtube] O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading webpage
[youtube] O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading video info webpage
ERROR: O3YP1TU-L_8: YouTube said: This video is unavailable.
strypey@Bishop:~$
Yet I am watching this video using Invidio.us right now.
I am a member!
name at domain writes:
> Youtube-dl has always worked reliably on my Flidas systems. But in the
> last few days I noticed it failing to download videos from YT.
>
> Here's the terminal output:
>
> strypey@Bishop:~$ youtube-dl https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8
> [generic] watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: Requesting header
> WARNING: Could not send HEAD request to
> https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: HTTP Error 503: Service
> Unavailable
> [generic] watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading webpage
> ERROR: Unable to download webpage: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable
> (caused by HTTPError()); please report this issue on
> https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version;
> see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call
> youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
> strypey@Bishop:~$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8
> [youtube] O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading webpage
> [youtube] O3YP1TU-L_8: Downloading video info webpage
> ERROR: O3YP1TU-L_8: YouTube said: This video is unavailable.
> strypey@Bishop:~$
>
> Yet I am watching this video using Invidio.us right now.
I'm on flidas as well. It works here after updating youtube-dl and by
calling python3:
sudo youtube-dl -U && python3 `which youtube-dl` "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8"
--
"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
Thanks for the tip but it didn't work for me. Here's the output:
strypey@Bishop:~$ sudo youtube-dl -U && python3 'which youtube-dl' "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8"
[sudo] password for strypey:
It looks like you installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py or a tarball. Please use that to update.
python3: can't open file 'which youtube-dl': [Errno 2] No such file or directory
The quotes in yrk's command are backquotes: ` and not '. I prefer the syntax $(...), which does exactly the same thing but avoids the confusion (and I prefer single quotes to double-quotes when the shell should not interpret anything in between):
$ sudo youtube-dl -U && python3 $(which youtube-dl) 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8'
I am a member!
name at domain writes:
> The quotes in yrk's command are backquotes: ` and not '. I prefer the
> syntax $(...), which does exactly the same thing but avoids the
> confusion (and I prefer single quotes to double-quotes when the shell
> should not interpret anything in between):
> $ sudo youtube-dl -U && python3 $(which youtube-dl)
> 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8'
That's a good suggestion. Thank you.
--
"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
I am a member!
name at domain writes:
> Thanks for the tip but it didn't work for me. Here's the output:
>
> strypey@Bishop:~$ sudo youtube-dl -U && python3 'which youtube-dl'
> "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8"
> [sudo] password for strypey:
> It looks like you installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip,
> setup.py or a tarball. Please use that to update.
> python3: can't open file 'which youtube-dl': [Errno 2] No such file or
> directory
I would suggest trying to download an updated youtube-dl manually,
installing python3, and try to use python3 to run it as above, just to
see if that solves your issue.
I've been using this method for a long time now to see videos from
youtube when people send me links. I've noticed that without regularly
updating youtube-dl and without python3, I often would get errors.
--
"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
Did you install youtube-dl with pip or apt? I'd really recommend against using apt because the version in the repositories is really outdated and that's not good considering how often Google updates the API. If you installed it through pip, you can run:
sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
If you installed it through apt, you can run:
sudo apt remove youtube-dl
and follow the instructions at https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html, that is
sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
Then you'll be able to update simply with sudo youtube-dl -U
I am a member!
name at domain writes:
> Did you install youtube-dl with pip or apt? I'd really recommend
> against using apt because the version in the repositories is really
> outdated and that's not good considering how often Google updates the
> API. If you installed it through pip, you can run:
>
> sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
I don't think flidas has pip.
--
"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
You are right, I did not know that. I have only been using Trisquel for 2 weeks or so and I assumed that it's an option based on the output of youtube-dl. Still, there is a chance that OP installed pip from some third-party source and then youtube-dl through it, so I'll leave that post as it is.
name at domain wrote:
> Youtube-dl has always worked reliably on my Flidas systems. But in the last few days
> I noticed it failing to download videos from YT.
You don't say what version of youtube-dl you're running, but this version:
$ youtube-dl --version
2020.05.08
works fine to download https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YP1TU-L_8
Perhaps you could download youtube-dl separately, chmod 700 that file, and run it (or
update it then run it) to see if a later version would help you?
So, would it be fair to say that this is another case of poor old Flidas showing it's age? I'm really looking forward to Etiona being released. Maybe I'll try youtube-dl on my test install of that.
> So, would it be fair to say that this is another case of poor old Flidas showing it's age?
The situation wouldn't be much better on other fixed-release distros, even those that are currently up-to-date. They will quickly fall behind in their versions of youtube-dl and incompatibilities between the script and site APIs will surface. It's just a piece of software for which freezing doesn't work because it has to constantly keep up to date with numerous independent web services. Like I said, it's better for you to download it directly from the developers using the instructions on their website, that way you can always update it to the newest version.
Youtube-dl is now working again. I didn't follow any of the newer instructions above. But if I remember rightly, I did upgrade to a newer version of the Linux kernel since I last tried. Maybe that helped somehow?
Centurino
> The situation wouldn't be much better on other fixed-release distros, even those that are currently up-to-date.
Doesn't that depend on the cause of the problem? Some of the comments here suggest that the problem is youtube-dl running with Python2, instead of Python3. Since the EoL was announced for Python2 some time ago, I presume distros maintainers would have ensured that they shipped Python3 in newer versions, and made it the default version that Python programs use.
> They will quickly fall behind in their versions of youtube-dl and incompatibilities between the script and site APIs will surface.
That's not been my experience with youtube-dl on Flidas. Apart from this recent hiccup, it has always worked fine on YT or Invidious instances, as mentioned in the OP. Perhaps the Trisquel devs backport the latest versions?
> I did upgrade to a newer version of the Linux kernel since I last tried. Maybe that helped somehow?
I see no way in which the kernel version could make a difference here.
> Some of the comments here suggest that the problem is youtube-dl running with Python2, instead of Python3.
You can check whether or not this is the case. Run
$ which youtube-dl
to determine the path of the executable (probably /usr/bin/youtube-dl) and open that file in a text editor.
If the first line is "#!/usr/bin/python3" or "#!/usr/bin/env python3" then that means that when executed youtube-dl will be run with Python 3. If you see "python" instead of "python3" then it will default to Python 2, and you'll need to either edit this line or explicitly run youtube-dl with python3.
In Debian and derivatives, /usr/bin/python is a symlink to /usr/bin/python2, so package maintainers make sure that programs requiring Python 3 explictly call python3. You would only run into a problem when installing youtube-dl from a source other than the Trisquel repository. Eventually this will no longer be an issue. Debian 11 will not package python2, so from that point on "python" will unambigiously refer to "python3" (at least until there's a python4 to worry about).
> Perhaps the Trisquel devs backport the latest versions?
IIRC the last time youtube-dl stopped working in Trisquel I did backport a newer version that worked, but no one has taken on the task of backporting each new version as it comes out or automating the process of doing so, which is what it would take to ensure that Trisquel's youtube-dl package always works.