Overpass API developpement

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I would with a client and we use OSM to gather map data and make tactile maps
for the visually impaired. Our product is scaling and we would like to start
querying OSM locally. I started following the instructions at
http://overpass-api.de/no_frills.html for setting this service up. I created a
virtual machine on Google Cloud running Ubuntu 14.04. I have successfully run
through all of the steps, including cloning the database with the
download_clone.sh script

Now, when I run a query with $EXEC_DIR/bin/osm3s_query --db-dir=$DB_DIR I get
empty results (see below)

----
encoding remark: Please enter your query and terminate it with CTRL+D.
<query type="node"><bbox-query n="51.0" s="50.9" w="6.9" e="7.0"/><has-kv
k="amenity" v="pub"/></query><print/>

encoding remark: Your input starts with a tag but not the root tag. Thus, a
line with the
datatype declaration and a line with the root tag 'osm-script' is
added. This shifts line numbering by -2 line(s).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<osm version="0.6" generator="Overpass API 0.7.55.7 8b86ff77">
<note>The data included in this document is from www.openstreetmap.org. The
data is made available under ODbL.</note>
<meta osm_base=""/>


</osm>
----

What might be causing this? There is no error output. Any help greatly
appreciated.