#1 2020-04-26 23:31:00

hhh

Meep!

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 9,820

Website

youtube-dl failure workaround

Using buster, I've had several times in the last few weeks where youtube-dl quit on me with an error message.

The workaround is to delete ~/.cache/youtube-dl and try the download again.

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DeepDayze

Member

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 896

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

Thanks for the info. I might try to see if the one on my  Sid install works. Perhaps attempt a backport of the Sid one?

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johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 6,924

Website

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

I think youtube-dl is one of the rare cases where it's better to go to the site and download the latest version for yourself. Put the file in ~/bin, don't run it as root and just accept the remaining security issues. Youtube &co change the rules so often that there's no way a Debian package can keep up. Run 'youtube-dl -U' on your local version and usually the latest version (2020.03.24 atm) fixes everything.

The downloaded executable is a binary file which you can't look at in a text editor
but the source code is open and viewable on GitHub: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

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twoion

ほやほや

Registered: 2015-08-10

Posts: 2,805

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

To keep it under "some" package control,

pip3 install --user youtube-dl
pip3 install --user --upgrade youtube-dl

etc will install into your home directory. Since youtube-dl releases to pypi regularly, this is also a good way to keep it current (unless you use a rolling distribution). Youtube-dl will then be available in ~/.local/bin as an executable.

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DeepDayze

Member

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 896

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

Thanks for the ideas, @johnraff and @twoion. I will look into setting it up the pip3 way so that I can install it  and update like a package.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2020-04-27 14:25:31)

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rbh

Member

From: Sweden/Vasterbotten/Rusfors

Registered: 2016-08-11

Posts: 437

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

I think it is good to install virtual environment for python.

https://packaging.python.org/guides/ins … ironments/

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twoion

ほやほや

Registered: 2015-08-10

Posts: 2,805

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

I think it is good to install virtual environment for python.

https://packaging.python.org/guides/ins … ironments/

Yes it would be; though youtube-dl is very special in that it has zero dependencies except for the python stdlib, which makes it easy to manage without. On my servers, all code I write for python, gets its own venv per project. System Python version hell is like DLL hell, but more modern.

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ohnonot

...again

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 4,598

Website

Re: youtube-dl failure workaround

I think youtube-dl is one of the rare cases where it's better to go to the site and download the latest version for yourself. Put the file in ~/bin, don't run it as root and just accept the remaining security issues. Youtube &co change the rules so often that there's no way a Debian package can keep up. Run 'youtube-dl -U' on your local version and usually the latest version (2020.03.24 atm) fixes everything.

The downloaded executable is a binary file which you can't look at in a text editor
but the source code is open and viewable on GitHub: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

Easiest solution by far - unless you run Arch

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