Local-Search-Engine.md

Searx

A privacy-respecting, hackable metasearch engine. Pronunciation: səːks

Install searx in your local system and make firefox to use it through your localhost for browsing Internet : Minimalistic installation

Initially I followed basic installation as described in https://github.com/asciimoo/searx . It includes

Installation

1. clone source: git clone https://github.com/asciimoo/searx.git && cd searx

2. install dependencies: ./manage.sh update_packages

3. edit your settings.yml (set your secret_key!) ##Actuall no need, unless you host this as online for others user to access, you can give any arbitary key as described in searx/searx#1473

4. run python searx/webapp.py to start the application

By Default searx search is runs in your local system and available to you at localhost:8888

1. Go to firefox
2. Enter localhost:8888 in the search bar
3. searx search engine is available as shown below and you can search the web.

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But I thought of Automate the process So, I did the following

4. In order to make your local serax as your default search engine in firefox, vist your loal searx page at localhost:8888. After that at the search bar, fint page options >> Add Search engine . But Everytime you need to go to the directory where you have cloned and need run python searx/webapp.py to access your local searx engine in firefox (or any other browser through localhost:8888). Instead you can automate the process just by issuing the command in your termianl from any directory with the following script.

#!/bin/bash
 bash -c "sudo lsof -t -i tcp:8888 -s tcp:listen | sudo xargs kill -KILL" #to kill the proper process on 8888 port.
 bash -c "python /path_to_searx/searx/webapp.py"

Name the script as searx (or anyname) and place it in /usr/bin/ (in Debian Based systems) and assign user permissions for the script

5. Then open terminal and run searx or anynmae that you assigned for script

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But If you want to make searx local engine available from at the time of system startup by default, and to avoid issuing commands to start, you the following script**

#!/bin/bash
bash -c "sudo lsof -t -i tcp:8888 -s tcp:listen | sudo xargs kill -KILL"
bash -c "python /Path_to_search/searx/searx/webapp.py" #Change the path to where your searx is cloned
./etc/init.d/searx

start() {
        echo -n "Starting searx local-server : "
        bash -c "sudo lsof -t -i tcp:8888 -s tcp:listen | sudo xargs kill -KILL"
        bash -c "python /Path_to_searx/searx/searx/webapp.py" #Change the path to where your searx is cloned
        return
}

stop() {
        echo -n "Shutting down searx "

        bash -c "sudo lsof -t -i tcp:8888 -s tcp:listen | sudo xargs kill -KILL"
        return
}

status() {
          bash -c "sudo lsof -t -i tcp:8888 -s tcp:listen"
          return
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    status)
        status
        ;;
    restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;
    reload)
        stop
        start
    *)
        echo "Usage:  {start|stop|status|reload|restart[|probe]"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          scriptname
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start daemon at boot time
# Description:       Enable service provided by daemon.
### END INIT INFO
exit $?

Note: In the code change /Path_to_search/ Change the path to where your searx is cloned.

6. Save the file in /etc/init.d/ as searx and
7. run update-rc.d searx defaults , this will update the init.d scripts at system start level.
8. Restart the system, and now your searx local search engine is always available at localhost:8888 and you can directly search firefox search bar(If you set default search engine as searx as said in (4) , else you need to go to localhost:8888 and browse the engine) for any thing.

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